Establishment of Flood Forecasting platform for Drava and Mura River

At the moment all hydrological forecasting models of Drava and Mura rivers are based on various data sources of different quality. Deficit partly attributed to the non-integrative nature of existing national hydrological and flood warning systems in Drava/ Mura basin. Based on the experiences from the extreme floods of past years, the existing system doesn’t provide the adequate safety margin to address the affected people needs and safety. The main goal of the project is therefore to stage a process of preparing a masterplan for improvement of flood safety by development of preliminary inputs for comprehensive transnational system of flood safety on Drava/ Mura River. Within the START project we will start-up with the situation analysis of existing frameworks on warning and response systems with a comparison of existing flood management systems in Danube area. The recommendations will enable the unification of standards, data interchangeability and bringing forward the reliability of forecasting. Preliminary assessment will provide a corner-stone for the creation of common protocols and forming of cooperation partnership (networking) for future projects – preparation of 2 proposal Situation analysis of state of the art on flood risks was carried out to analyze the extreme events early warning and response systems of national disaster centers (mapping of best approaches in countries, legislation requirements in setting novel approaches) with a corresponding recommendations. Secondly a comparative analysis of existing flood-related management systems on EU level have been done in order to attribute full range of solutions for stakeholders managing waterways of Drava and Mura River. These build-up the basis for future endeavors and proposals of the emerging partnerships. The project also formed a strategic partnership/stakeholder network. Based on the outputs of background analysis two future project ideas (for DTp and H2020) have been developed related to the flood forecasting in Danube region focusing on sub-basins of Drava and Mura.