Joint initiative towards a International Fujita scale to assess tornado and wind damage (with European Severe Storms Lab) is still growing. Recently, there was a poster presentation at EMS Annual Meeting in Copenhagen, 9-13.9.2019. Information and first IF-scale draft document (v 0.1) can be found at https://www.essl.org/cms/international-fujita-scale/, there is also an internal forum for experts to discuss case studies and further refinements, experts who are working in this field are welcome to join our initiative. Next face-to-face meeting of the IF-Scale steering committee is planned along with the ESSL Tornado and Windstorm Damage Assessment Workshop in August 2020 in Wr. Neustadt, Austria. https://www.essl.org/cms/upcoming-events/workshop-damage-assessment/. Spread the message!

The EUMETNET EMMA/Meteoalarm PM carried out a survey on implementation of impact-oriented warnings among Meteoalarm members in Europe in August  2018 – May 2019. 79 questions covered topics from warning format, production process of warnings, dissemination of warnings, verification of warnings, warning strategy, crowdsourcing and cross-border collaboration 32/37 of European NMHSs replied, making it a valuable dataset for potential initiatives on the regional / global scale in the field of IoW. Results were presented at the EMS Annual Meeting in Copenhagen, 9-13.9.2019. Publication is planned for 2020.

European Weather Observer –ZAMG and ESSL are in contact with a number of European NMHSs to work on and refine a pan-European, standardized set of human-assessed (hydro, meteo, geo) crowdsourcing reporting parameters and enable exchange through a standardized API. In 2018 a first set of reporting parameters was defined by DHMZ, FMI, KNMI, ESSL, ZAMG and other ESSL collaborators (i.e. European spotter groups). Our common proposal is, that European NMHSs shall act as national data hubs for weather- and impact observations enabling exchange of data between NMHS level and European level. Currently a consortium of participating NMHSs is formed. A standardized API between all partners will enable real time data exchange using the MQTT protocol. NMHSs are invited to provide API to subnational collaborators (e.g. spotter groups, emergency authorities). The API can be easily implemented in existing web pages and apps, e.g. https://wettermelden.at. Recently a presentation was held at EMS Annual Meeting in Copenhagen, 9-13.9.2019. https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EMS2019/EMS2019-887-2.pdf