OVERCOME - digital innOVation in flood Early warning and wateR-related disease prevention for COMmunity capacity building and rEsilience

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OVERCOME consortium include world-leading organisations to develop state-of-the-art research plan that integrates digital innovations in natural hazard and risk predictions in order to develop intervention strategies for strengthening the resilience of vulnerable communities against climate hazards and health impacts.The partners from the UK, Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe will contribute knowledge and skills in climate and meteorology, hydrology and water resources, flood forecasting, droughts, water quality, epidemiology and public health, smart technologies, data science, environmental science, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), risk communication, disaster management, social and policy sciences, and socio-economics. The collaboration will combine multidisciplinary knowledge to develop a novel holistic framework to forecast the impact of floods/droughts and associated disease outbreaks. OVERCOME also has strong support from global experts and local major stakeholders. The external partners will steer research direction throughout the project, contribute their complementary knowledge, and engage the team with additional partners through their strong international networking.OVERCOME will organise a kick-off meeting in one African partner's country to (1) brief our research ideas to the key stakeholders in African countries; (2) allow for all parties involved to learn from each other the capacity that each institution can contribute to the OVERCOME consortium; (3) understand the expectations that the stakeholders have on the project; (4) identify the knowledge gaps in research and the extra expertise required within the consortium.Following the kick-off meeting, the lead partners in Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe will further reach out to additional partners in their countries to complement the skills within the consortium. Networking and Capacity Building Workshops (NCBWs) will be organised to incorporate local stakeholders for co-designing research methodology and outcomes to ensure that the project outputs will be adopted by stakeholders for real-world practices to deliver long-term impact to communities. Local Stakeholder Engagement Workshops will be held for local stakeholders to review and feedback on the final second stage proposal. The participants will evaluate the objectives and planned tasks from WGs for shaping research topics to benefit most stakeholders and vulnerable communities. The engagement can also examine and guarantee the feasibility of proposed solutions.We will also synergise with other consortia, projects, and professional groups to further strengthen the consortium, enhance the research vision, collect data for the full research, and widen the impact from the project.