Implemented by the European Commission as part of the Copernicus Programme

GloFAS and GFM Users' Feedback

The 2022 Annual Survey was the first survey to include feedback for both the Global Flood Awareness System (GloFAS) and the Global Flood Monitoring (GFM). The survey was conducted in February 2023 for the reference year 2022. 

The results of the survey can be found in the attached document; a short summary of the main outcomes with specific focus on the action items is presented below.

Survey participants were generally satisfied with the GloFAS and GFM products, which they could adequately explore via the GloFAS Map Viewer. A few minor adjustments could help to further improve the user experience (e.g., more detailed legends, shortcuts to documentation, a more effective colour palette). For the GloFAS layers, the 2022 survey confirmed the positive response of the previous survey. The level of satisfaction for the GFM layers was equally generally high.

GloFAS and GFM documentation content has been rated as satisfactory. Users’ awareness of GloFAS resources (Forecast Wiki, CEMS Flood Data User Guide, webinars) increased in 2022 thus encouraging a continued communication effort, which must now include the recently published GloFAS User Guide and the extensive GFM documentation (Monitoring Wiki, including the Quick Start Guide). Communication efforts about products and services should focus on GloFAS and GFM data download opportunities.  

Regarding future developments, GloFAS users showed high interest in improving the modelling of river routing. For GFM, the users expressed interest in the release of a product capable of estimating the water depth in flooded areas.

The list below enumerates some of the actions that have been planned to acknowledge GloFAS and GFM users’ feedback:

  • Improve legend descriptions in the Map Viewer, for both GloFAS and GFM products.
  • Continued improvements of the GloFAS web page to ameliorate the communication of opportunities (with specific attention to data download opportunities and modalities) and developments.
  • Review of the FAQ section of the CEMS GloFAS User Guide to provide answers to many of the questions raised by the participants of this survey.
  • Continued improvement of the internal protocol to respond to the requests submitted via the GloFAS and GFM Contact Form.
  • Make the GFM quick-start guide more adaptive when displayed on a laptop. !improvement in place! The new version released through Rise360 allows users to select a full screen mode.
  • Improve the level of detail of GloFAS and GFM product layers. !improvement in place!  Updated GFM Affected Population layer
  • GloFAS long term (multi-year) development: improved modelling of river routing.
  • GFM long term (multi-year) development: estimation of the water depth in flooded areas.

The first Annual Survey was conducted in February 2022 and it gathered the feedback for the year 2021. This survey focused exclusively on the GloFAS service (the Global Flood Monitoring product was released in operation in 2022).

The results of the survey can be found in the attached document; a short summary of the main outcomes with specific focus on the action items is presented below.

The most preferred channel to access GloFAS products is the GloFAS webpage (91% of the responders). On average, 80% of the responders think the GloFAS layers are clearly explained and intuitive. The responders expressed interest in attending webinars, and they would like to receive updates via emails and posts on the GloFAS website. Nevertheless, the survey uncovered the need to improve communication about GloFAS resources (e.g. online documentation), data availability, and upcoming updates, and to facilitate the interactions between the users and the CEMS Floods team.

The following actions were completed within 1 year since the completion of the survey:

  • All the webinars can be accessed from this page.
  • New! A pop-up top banner is visible in the map viewer to facilitate the communication of relevant updates.
  • The online documentation available from the Forecast Wiki has been reviewed and expanded to include a GloFAS User Guide, which provides instructions for data visualization and access, and advice on how to use the data.
  • The internal protocol to respond to the requests submitted via the GloFAS Contact Form has been reviewed.