Every year Africa is hit by extreme floods which, combined with high levels of vulnerability and increasing population exposure, often result in humanitarian crises and population displacement. Impact-based forecasting and early warning for natural hazards is recognized as a step forward in disaster risk reduction, thanks to its focus on people, livelihoods, and assets at risk. Yet, the majority of the African population is not covered by any sort of early warning system.

This article describes the setup and the methodological approach of Flood-PROOFS East Africa, an impact based riverine flood forecasting and early warning system for the Greater Horn of Africa (GHA), with a forecast range of 5 days.