With reference to ECO Secretariat notes of May and August 2004, ECO Member States expressed their support to the proposal put forward by the Islamic Republic of Iran Meteorological Organization to establish a “Regional Center for Risk Management of Natural Disasters” at the National Center for Climatology in Mashhad, I. R. of Iran.
The necessity of the Center was approved by the 1st ECO Ministerial Meeting on Agriculture (Tehran, 2004), the 3rd ECO Ministerial Meeting on Agriculture (Tehran, 2007) and the 17th Meeting of the ECO Council of Ministers (Herat, 2007). The 16th Regional Planning Council allocated ECO feasibility funds to its establishment, and the Center was inaugurated during the first Meeting of the ECO Heads of Meteorological Organizations in September 2007.
Objectives
- Establishing an efficient information management system
- Short and long-term forecasting and predictions
- Disaster risk assessment and analysis
- Disaster monitoring and early warning system
- Capacity building (education and training)