The Copernicus EU space programme led by DG Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs has entered its full operational phase following the adoption of the Copernicus Regulation in April 2014 (Regulation (EU) No 377/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 3.4.2014 establishing the Copernicus Programme and repealing Regulation (EU) No 911/2010 (COM/2009/0223 final — COD 2009/0070)). The emergency management services (EMSs) mapping and early warning system (EWS), which have been initial operational activities since April 2012 and October 2012 respectively, will continue as a full operational service as defined in Article 5 of the Copernicus Regulation. Copernicus EMS is operating in direct support to the European civil protection mechanism executed by the European response coordination centre (ERCC) and the EU Member States. The implementation of the Copernicus EMS has 4 different modules:

1. the EMS rapid mapping: on-demand and fast provision of geospatial information in support to emergency management activities immediately following an emergency event;

2. the EMS risk and recovery mapping: on-demand provision of geospatial information in support to emergency management activities during the phases of the emergency management cycle not related to the immediate response, i.e. not requiring rush mode delivery. In particular, information provision relates to the prevention, preparedness and reconstruction phases;

3. the EMS validation: verification of a sample of service outputs produced by Copernicus emergency management service rapid mapping or Copernicus emergency management service risk and recovery mapping services, and includes external quality control, validation of thematic information content and comparison to alternative information sources related to the emergency context;

4. the EMS early warning: its first building block is the European flood awareness system (EFAS) delivering added value information to the national hydrological services and provides a unique overview on the current and forecast flood situation. The second building block will be from 2015 onwards via the European forest fire information system (EFFIS) which delivers harmonised information on forest fires in Europe.

The key scope of this procurement is to operate the EFAS computational centre. The main roles of the computational centre are: to produce flood forecasts twice daily for entire Europe and neighbouring countries based on multiple numerical weather prediction inputs from different weather services and models, to publish the results on the EFAS information system Web interface which is accessible to the EFAS dissemination centre and the EFAS partner network, to regularly assess the performance of EFAS through skill score calculations. The role of the EFAS computational centre extends also to the development of the technical systems to keep them state-of-the-art, continuous error diagnostics, solutions on how the performance of EFAS can be improved, improvements along the forecasting chain including post- and pre-processing modules for input and output data, hydrological model development, system development; user support for the EFAS information system. An extension of the forecast system with a simplified set for global applications may possibly be required under this contract. The possibility to perform technical assessments aimed at identifying issues or alternative methods to keep the overall EFAS a state-of-the-art system is also part of this framework agreement.