1. Report of EG-PWS EG-PWS Co-Coordinators Mr Lap-shun Lee
Co-Coordinators
Mr Lap-shun Lee
Hong Kong, China
Dr Muhammad Hanif
Pakistan
Dr Evgeny Vasilyev
Russian Federation
Theme Leader in Socio-economic Benefits of Meteorological and Hydrological Services
Mr Jinjun Pan
China
Theme Leader in Delivery of Warning Services
Mr Chuanhai Qian
Theme Leader in Education and Public Outreach related to PWS
Mr Ikhyun Cho
Republic of Korea

2. Major activities in 2016
A survey for RA II Members was conducted online from October to November to gather information on the basic capability of NMHSs in the Region
32 responses out of 35 Members were received. In the aspect of PWS, it was found that 89% of Members operated a website for real-time weather forecasts and warnings, which was quite similar compared with 90% in the previous survey in 2011
Percentage of Members operating automatic telephone answering system had increased from 65% to 74%. However, percentage of Members operating a TV weather forecast programme slightly reduced from 40% to 37%
The survey also revealed that cooperation with other service providers in the provision of specific weather services or advice might need more enhancement

3. The survey also showed that 78% of the Members contributed operational weather information to WMO’s on-line World Weather Information Service (WWIS), with the total number of cities for which weather forecasts are on WWIS being 420
39% of Members supported the exchange of official warnings of severe weather by contributing to WMO’s on-line Severe Weather Information Centre (SWIC)

4. The EG-PWS has been following up with the WMO Secretariat to update the list of PWS focal point. It will also continue to explore the list of PWS technical contact from Members

5. A meeting of CBS PWS Expert Teams was held in Shanghai, China from 27 June to 1 July 2016, with experts from China; Hong Kong, China; other countries and WMO Secretariat
The meeting identified and discussed in depth a number of topics or issues for the development of implementation plan to the "WMO Guidelines on Multi-hazard Forecast and Warning Services“
The meeting agreed that a key element in the success of impact-based forecasts was the engagement of stakeholders to ensure that their requirements were clearly expressed, understood and recorded so that action could be taken on them
The meeting also supported the engagement of social scientists in the work related to multi-hazard impact-based forecast and warning services

6. A meeting of another CBS PWS Expert Team on services and products innovation and improvement was held from 11 to 15 July 2016, with participants from Hong Kong, China; Japan, Russian Federation, other countries and WMO Secretariat
The meeting agreed that although the Big Data issue dealt with many different kinds of data, of particular interest to PWS was crowdsourced data
It decided to establish a Task Team on Big Data to investigate the utilization of Big Data for monitoring, impact assessment, and forecasting and to collect and share examples of different approaches to crowdsourced data

7. A Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) Implementation Workshop was held in Thailand from 23 to 24 August 2016, with WMO being one of the workshop sponsors
The workshop focused on emergency alerting as enabled by the CAP standard. It was a technical meeting for information sharing among experts from NMHSs and other organizations. Common issues and how best to expand the adoption of CAP were discussed

8. A Workshop on the Implementation of New NWP and Impact-based Forecast and Warning Techniques was held at the Department of Meteorology and Hydrology, Myanmar from 6 to 9 September 2016
Representatives from various NMHSs and international organizations participated in the workshop, which discussed various issues such as the developments of colour-coded warnings, impact-based products, NWP and nowcasting system
The meeting further coordinated technical supports to be provided by various parties, and prepared an action plan with timelines for Myanmar

9. A Stakeholder Workshop to Implement an Impact-based Forecast and Warning Service in Maldives was held from 26 to 28 September in Maldives
It provided guidance and assistance to Maldives Meteorological Service and national stakeholders on the implementation of a pilot project on impact-based forecasting for Maldives
In the workshop, a number of presentations were on the current status of operational warning systems for meteorological, hydrological and geophysical hazards, the challenges posed by those systems, and the disaster reduction activities

10. A WMO Voluntary Cooperation Programme (VCP) Training Workshop on Use and Interpretation of Mesoscale NWP for High-impact Weather Forecasting was held in Hong Kong, China from 5 to 9 December 2016
The workshop focussed on both application and theoretical aspects of high-impact weather forecasting using mesoscale NWP models