The European Flood Awareness Ssytem (EFAS) operates on a pan-European scale to provide coherent medium range flood forecasts and related informations and which serves as an independent reference information set for most of the hydrological services responsible for flood forecasting in Europe. EFAS was developed from the Joint Reaserch Centre (JRC) and the European Centre for medium range weather forecsts (ECMWF). EFAS provides information to the national hydrological services when there is a danger that critical flood levels might be excedeed. EFAS displays the results of the flood forecasts through a web application that grants end-users the ability to contribute and share information.
A part of information provided by EFAS is restricted to the EFAS users (real time forecasts), non real time forecasts are freely accessible for all the users. Though the EFAS interface flood warnings emails are send the the EFAS partners in order to inform them of a possible upcoming event. There are strict criteria on the activation and deactivation of these warnings. Alongside the alerts a daily overview is sent to the Emergency Response Coordination Centre (ERCC) of the European Commission which contains information on ongoing floods in Europe