Chongqing serves as a crucial pivot for Western Development in the new era and inland opening-up of China, playing a unique role in promoting the Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle, the Belt and Road, Yangtze River Economic Belt, and New International Land-Sea Corridor.

In recent years, Chongqing, China is exploring innovative practice of early warning to provide its solution and wisdom for the global community in enhancing disaster prevention and mitigation capabilities. As China is actively implementing United Nations Early Warnings for All Initiative (EW4All) , the instrumental early warning practice of Chongqing will serve as beneficial reference and role model for Members of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the entire world.

Known as the "Mountain City" and the “River City”, Chongqing is also a vibrant and charming modern megacity. However, the complex topography and frequent occurrence of severe meteorological disasters (such as mountains torrent, small and middle river floods, geological disasters, rainstorm, drought, extreme high temperature and low temperature) have posed huge challenges to urban operation and governance of this city.

Chongqing Municipal Meteorological Service (hereinafter referred to as the Service) aligns with the requirements of sophisticated monitoring, precise forecasting, and tailored service, and serving as the first line of defense for disaster prevention and mitigation. Within Digital Chongqing's "1361" framework, the Service has constructed the Sitian Digital Intelligence Meteorological System, integrated service guarantees, and explored intelligent meteorology for modern megacity governance.

"Tianshu • Intelligent Coordinated Observing System" has established an integrated space-air-ground network with satellites, radars, vertical soundings, and ground observations. The ground observation spacing has been shortened to 5.5 kilometers, and the weather radar coverage is reaching 95.8% of the urban area. By integrating data from 30+ departments, a real-time big data platform is now processing over 100 million records per millisecond.

"Tianshu • Intelligent Coordinated Observing System Source：the Service

In addition, "Tianzi • Intelligent Forecasting System" has integrated numerical weather prediction (NWP) models and Artificial Intelligence (AI), achieving minute scale and meter scale precision, with 63-minute lead time for severe convective weather warnings. And the spatiotemporal resolution for 2-hour heavy precipitation forecasts has been enhanced to 5 minutes and 500 meters respectively.

"Tianzi • Intelligent Forecasting System" Source：the Service

"Zhitian • Smart Service System" has established a grid forecasting and intelligent meteorological service, targeting more than 20 sectors such as agriculture, energy, transportation, and tourism. It has supported Chongqing in high-quality development, mage-city governance, urban-rural integration and rural revitalization.

"Zhitian • Smart Service System"  Source: the Service

"Yutian • Smart Disaster Prevention System" has converted general meteorological warnings into targeted operational instructions, reaching municipalities to grid personnel at all levels . Collaborating with departments such as emergency management, natural resources, water conservancy, forestry, housing, and traffic police, the meteorological department has established detailed warning operations for geological disasters, river floods, forest fires, urban waterlogging, and highways. Meanwhile, the "Chongqing Comprehensive Meteorological Warning " APP has been integrated into Chongqing's "141" primary-level intelligent governance system, enabling "one-stop early warning linkage"  at all three levels in the Digital City operation and governance center.

"Yutian · Smart Disaster Prevention System"

In response to EW4ALL，Chongqing has progressively established a local mechanism of meteorological early warning with 4 following principles, namely government-led, warning-triggered, cross-department coordination, and public participation. The local government has taken the lead in establishing a complete system of policies and regulations, with a “1131620” progressive forecasting and early warning mechanism and an integrated early warning information dissemination system. According to the forecast, the “1+7+N” consultation mechanism referring to cross-department coordination would help analyze and assess the disaster characteristics with simultaneous conferencing. Furthermore, public participation is highly valued with 5,972 identified disaster-sensitive social entities and public infrastructure, and 281 verified national comprehensive disaster-mitigation demonstration communities and different levels of meteorological outreach and education bases jointly dedicated for public participation in meteorology.

Shapingba District Meteorological Office of Chongqing has developed a digital flood control system integrating 41 types of data from 12 departments to establish two digital application scenarios, namely river basin flood and urban flood. Each scenario contains four functional modules and they are as follows: risk detection, forecasting and early warning, emergency dispatching, and disaster assessment and resilience. With the three-dimensional flooding analysis model deduced from the historical archive and various observations, the enhanced emergency flood prevention plan, the sound emergency dispatch mechanism as well as the continuous emphasis on science outreach and related infrastructure construction, this system has become a template of effectively implementing EW4All.

Zhi Tian·Flood Prevention and Mitigation Management and Decision-making System in Shapingba District, Chongqing Source: the Service

The early warning practice of Chongqing has been recognized by WMO officials and become a template of disaster prevention and mitigation for the global community. Moving forward, the Service will continue to contribute Chinese wisdom to the world in terms of early warning.

In collaboration with Chongqing Municipal Meteorological Service

Reporter: ZHU Yuhan and PU Xi

Editor: LIU Shuqiao