Users' Requirements Report, Deliverable 2.3 – ECFAS Project (GA 101004211), www.ecfas.eu

The European Copernicus Coastal Flood Awareness System (ECFAS) project aimed at contributing to the evolution of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (https://emergency.copernicus.eu/) by demonstrating the technical and operational feasibility of a European Coastal Flood Awareness System. Specifically, ECFAS provides a much-needed solution to bolster coastal resilience to climate risk and reduce population and infrastructure exposure by monitoring and supporting disaster preparedness, two factors that are fundamental to damage prevention and recovery if a storm hits. The ECFAS Proof-of-Concept development ran from January 2021 to December 2022. The ECFAS project was a collaboration between Scuola Universitaria Superiore IUSS di Pavia (Italy, ECFAS Coordinator), Mercator Ocean International (France), Planetek Hellas (Greece), Collecte Localisation Satellites (France), Consorzio Futuro in Ricerca (Italy), Universitat Politecnica de Valencia (Spain), University of the Aegean (Greece), and EurOcean (Portugal), and was funded by the European Commission H2020 Framework Programme within the call LC-SPACE-18-EO-2020 - Copernicus evolution: research activities in support of the evolution of the Copernicus services. Reference literature: D. Chatzistratis, A.F. Velegrakis, T. Chalazas, B. Alves, E. Schiavon, I. Monioudi, C. Armaroli (2025). European Early Warning Systems for coastal floods: User needs, system availability and pertinent policy and legislation, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 105602, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2025.105602. Description of the product Deliverable D.2.3 objective was to ascertain end-users’ requirements and needs in the development of a European Coastal Flood Awareness System. It involves a pool (sample) composed of 189 potential ECFAS end-users. An anonymous questionnaire was designed and activated online on an open-source internet survey tool to collect the end-users’ information. The information constituted a dataset on the end-users’ profile and their preferred technical specifications of the different components that form ECFAS. Apart from the questionnaire design, the work involved dataset management (creation of an executable program to facilitate data management and the creation of new – composite – variables), data quality control, and statistical analyses performed to describe the user pool. 117 end-users completed the questionnaire (62% response rate). The pool was mostly composed of respondents from public organisations based in Southern and Mediterranean European Countries. There is generally great support for the products of ECFAS. The specifications of the early warning and mapping components indicated by the end-users are in agreement with the ECFAS initial specifications and were also integrated (when feasible) into the coastal flood warning system. Finally, it is submitted that the end-users’ engagement process was successful in achieving results that provided crucial information for the design of a coastal flood awareness system. Disclaimer: ECFAS partners provide the data "as is" and "as available" without warranty of any kind. The ECFAS partners shall not be held liable resulting from the use of the information and data provided. This project has received funding from the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 101004211