Community Event - Water Security is Global Security: A scalable partnership that turns Earth intelligence into action for human well being

Description

Water crises have featured among the top five global risks in the World Economic Forum Global Risk Report for over a decade, yet most of the people most exposed still have no access to reliable river forecasting. GEOGLOWS, a GEO Flagship Program and contributing partner to the UN Early Warnings for All (EW4All) initiative, closes that gap: transforming open Earth observation into freely accessible, actionable river intelligence for every government, community, and institution that needs it.

The mechanism is a coordinated partnership. The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) provides global runoff forecasting. GEOGLOWS converts that into river-flow intelligence at scale. National Hydrometeorological Services act as co-producers, embedding local knowledge to make global forecasts locally trusted and operationally useful. WMO connects outputs to national early warning systems. Esri delivers access through ArcGIS Living Atlas. AWS hosts the full dataset openly in the cloud. Google.org has invested $3.5 million to accelerate adoption. SERVIR Global sustains regional implementation. BYU and AQUAVEO drive innovation from research to operations. The outcome: a replicable, open, and institutionally owned model for turning Earth intelligence into water security action.

Session CE13 is designed to produce commitment. The World Economic Forum frames water as a systemic economic risk. WMO and IUCN anchor the science and ecosystem dimensions. The Green Climate Fund and Swiss Re bring the climate finance and risk perspective. Practitioners from Asia and Latin America demonstrate what operational deployment looks like on the ground. Together, they make the case, grounded in evidence, investment, and institutional reach, for water intelligence to be recognized as essential global infrastructure, and for GEOGLOWS to serve as the open, shared foundation that makes universal early warning coverage by 2027 achievable.