HRC signed a contract on 24 October 2019 with the Department of Infrastructure, Ports and Energy of the Government of Saint Lucia to develop and implement the Saint Lucia Flash Flood Guidance system (SLFFGS) for the island.  HRC will be working closely with the Saint Lucia Meteorological Services (SLMS) and the Water Resources Management Agency (WRMA) to provide them with a system to help assess flash flood threats and provide warnings.  HRC will develop the system tailored specifically to the meteorological and hydrologic conditions in Saint Lucia and then install the system at the SLMS offices on servers procured by HRC.  Input data for ingest to the SLFFGS will be obtained from local, regional, and global sources.  Rainfall estimates used by the system will come from a variety of sources including satellite (Global HydroEstimator from U.S. NOAA/NESDIS and CMORPH from U.S. NOAA/CPC), available radar data from Martinique (MeteoFrance) and Barbados (Barbados Meteorological Service) as well as in-situ rain gauges from upgraded networks operated by SLMS and the WRMA.  Mesoscale rainfall forecast model data will be obtained from MeteoFrance in Martinique as well as the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology in Barbados.

The project was kicked off during an initial workshop held at the SLMS offices in Castries, St. Lucia from 16-18 December 2019.  HRC and the SLMS will be working to complete the implementation by the end of the summer 2020.