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EUMETSAT information day for Western Balkan countries.

On 4 April, EUMETSAT Director-General Alain Ratier led a delegation attending an information day for the Western Balkan countries organised by EUMETSAT and the Meteorological Services of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The aim of the information day was to reinforce the dialogue between EUMETSAT and the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) in the region. It was a follow-up of the information day in Montenegro in June 2009 and of the EUMETSAT workshop in Skopje, former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, in April 2011.

The information day provided an opportunity to present the latest status of EUMETSAT programmes and activities and to receive feedback on the current use of EUMETSAT data and products (and EUMETCast) by the NMHSs in the region. An important part of the workshop was also dedicated to a presentation of the activities of the NMHSs of the region, as well as of their expectations with regard to the acquisition and use of EUMETSAT data and products.

EUMETSAT’s participation in the World Meteorological Organization’s project “Building resilience to disasters in Western Balkans and Turkey”, funded by the European Commission Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance, and in potential future programmes funded by the EC was also discussed.

The objective of the cooperation between EUMETSAT and the NMHSs in the region is to maximise the benefits that the NMHSs receive from the operational use of the data and products from EUMETSAT satellites in various application areas.

During the last years as part of EUMETSAT’s Data Access for Western Balkan and Eastern European Countries (DAWBEE) project, EUMETCast satellite reception stations were installed in each of the Western Balkan countries to provide real-time access to all the data and products from EUMETSAT satellites as well as forecast data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). Training has also been provided to the operators and users of the stations.