TO PROMOTE CAPACITY BUILDING, TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER, DISSEMINATION AND PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT
The AXA Chair on Sand and Dust Storms searches to reach the expected social impact of their results promoting scientific knowledge, enhancing dissemination, technology transfer and capacity building considering specific audiences from the scientific community (involved in weather, climate and atmospheric chemistry research), public and private sectors.
The dissemination actions will be planned in close coordination with the WMO Sand and Dust Storm Advisory and Assessment System (SDS-WAS) Regional Center for Northern Africa, Europe and Middle East to reach the end-user communities and to disseminate the resulting dust products to the target audiences such as policy and decision-makers on national and international levels or non-governmental organisations. The goal of the AXA Chair on Sand and Dust Storms is to enhance the current research network of the WMO SDS-WAS Regional Center and enable fruitful collaborations between researchers and end-users communities while increasing the international visibility of its impacts to attract new users and sectors affected by SDSs. Since 2010, the WMO (SDS-WAS) Regional Center has become a reference for dust products but also a source of data. Moreover, the results raised within the AXA Chair on Sand and Dust Storms will lead to improvements in the products delivered by the Barcelona Dust Forecast Center, the centre designed by the WMO to generate and distribute operational dust forecasts to the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHS) of Northern Africa, Europe and Middle East. Furthermore, during the last years, these two WMO-supported centres have coordinated a series of training courses and seminars mainly targeted at operational meteorologists from NMHS. The events have also been eventually attended by PhD students and post-doctoral researchers interested in atmospheric composition and/or solar radiation.
Dissemination actions will be divided into four areas aimed at the four major audiences interested in the AXA Chair on SDS program outcomes.
SDS represents a serious hazard for life, property, environment and economy in many countries and these hazards can be classified according to the three processes of the wind erosion system: on entrainment of fine particles, during their transport, and on their deposition. Because of the multi-scale and multi-disciplinary impacts associated to SDS, it is fundamental to promote the interaction with researchers from other disciplines, health scientists and engineers, for instance, to explore the implications of SDS in their fields.
It is crucial the close interaction with the industry stakeholders to engage their interest in these applications and promote the inclusion of the currently available dust products in their decision-making processes or impact mitigation procedures.
The National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) are main agents in the provision of local information related to SDS events and therefore it is a priority to foster technology transfer and capacity building within this sector, particularly in the least developed countries in North Africa.
It is necessary to have an impact in the public debate and give more visibility to SDS and their impacts. Ensuring that the general public understands this phenomenon along with the economic and human impacts will be decisive to a successful deployment of the risk assessment and impact mitigation tools.