Flooding is a significant global hazard, which is thought to be becoming more severe and frequent. Furthermore, the most vulnerable groups to flooding are in developing countries where loss of life and long-term adverse social impacts occur. Unlike the UK, which has a mature flood defence system, many developing countries don’t have robust defences due to a lack of technical expertise and expensive technology. A significant part of this limitation relates to flood forecasting and warning. However, most countries do now have access to modern cellular phone networks in their towns and cities. This provides the potential to develop flood forecasting and warning systems. The EWIN project (Flood Prediction using real time sensing Emergency Water Information Networks over mobile phone networks and Wi-Fi) will assess how to use mobile phone networks combined with WiFi and low-cost hydrology sensing to help developing countries tackle flooding issues, specifically developing a real-time flood monitoring system.