The Global Flood Partnership annual meeting 2018 : bridging the gap between science and users

The Global Flood Partnership (GFP) Conference 2018 was held June 25 - 27 2018, at Deltares in Delft, the Netherlands. More than 100 participants attended the conference coming from 29 different countries of 5 continents. They represented 70 institutions including international organisations, the private sector, national authorities, universities, governmental research agencies and non-profit organisations. The organising committee of the 2018 conference consisted of Albert Kettner (University of Colorado, Dartmouth Flood Observatory), Erin Coughlan de Perez (Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Center), Lorenzo Alfieri and Peter Salamon (Joint Research Centre of the European Commission), Mark Trigg (University of Leeds), Albrecht Weerts and Aashish Bhardwaj (Deltares), Ana Prados (University of Maryland Baltimore County), Huan Wu (Sun Yat-sen University), Roberto Rudari (CIMA Foundation) and Sagy Cohen (University of Alabama). In addition, Deltares kindly supported on the logistics and with some dedicated funding. The conference theme was "Bridging the gap between science and users" and participants discussed how to best foster the dialogue between scientists and users and how GFP products and expert knowledge can work in synergy to provide key information to emergency managers at different stages before, during and after severe flooding. The participants had the opportunity to share their latest relevant research and activities through ignite talks, posters, presentations, the GFP market booths, sub-workshops and a table-top exercise. As usual, the advances and success stories of the partnership were reviewed and the next steps to further strengthen the GFP were discussed.