Hidrológiai Közlöny, 2017 (97. évfolyam)
2017 / 3. szám - TRANSNATIONAL EFFORTS - Oroszi Viktor György - Tamás Enikő Anna - Tamás Beatrix: Flood management education in the Danube basin - needs and challenges
24 Hidrológiai Közlöny (Hungarian Journal of Hydrology) 2017. 97. évf. 3. sz. Flood management education in the Danube basin - needs and challenges Viktor György Oroszi*, Enikő Anna Tamás**, Beatrix Kosztyi* * EU Strategy for the Danube Region Priority Area 5 (Environmental risks) Hungarian co-ordination at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary (E-mail: Viktor.Oroszi@mfa.gov.hu ) ** Institute for Hydraulic Engineering and Water Management, Faculty of Water Sciences of the National University of Public Service Abstract The even more disastrous transboundary floods, the catastrophic events in 2002,2013 and 2014 indicated strong societal and political will for basin-wide actions to strenghten regional and cross-border co-operation along the Danube as the most international river of the World. Nowadays emphasis has been put on living together with floods rather than coping with them and simple flood defence turned into integrated flood management. The possibilities of non-structural ways to mitigate flood risk became significantly important. Strenghtened resilience and better preparedness can also be reached with the help of education related to flood management and civil protection. Therefore, both the education of the general public - provided mainly at the elementary and secondary school levels - and postgraduate courses/trainings for experts working at the water directorates or at the civil protection field is essential to reduce losses. Nevertheless, secondary school geography textbooks in the Danube countries containing the description of natural disasters only at 2,7 % of the pages in average. Descriptions of risk assessment, prevention, rescue methods, types of renovation and complex or problem-based descriptions are less common. At universities, flood protection topics are covered by the Civil Engineering degree programmes, but the topic of flood management is discussed mainly within other subjects. The same problem applies for the Disaster Management programmes in Hungary. The lack of an education/training network in the basin was identified in 2015 by the EU Strategy for the Danube Region Environmental risks priority area based on their survey. In the first Flood Risk Management Plan of the Danube River Basin (DFRMP) 12 countries highlighted the need towards trainings for experts and education of the inhabitants. Therefore a workshop has been organized in June 2017 for experts to promote networking, to discuss the needs and challenges in this field and to get acquainted with the funding possibilities. The main findings of this workshop have been summarized in the present article. Keywords Danube river basin, education, flood risk prevention, strengthening flood resilience, EU Strategy for the Danube Region. INTRODUCTION The Danube basin covers more than 801.463 km2 in 19 countries which makes it the most international river of the World. Transboundary floods typically affect larger areas, can be more severe, result in a higher number of deaths and cause increased economic loss than non-transboundary rivers (Baaker 2009) due to non-harmonized strategies, incoherent flood forecasting systems and flood protection measures, administrative burdens, or the lack of cooperation between countries. Under the umbrella of the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR) the countries are multilaterally cooperating towards a harmonised flood protection in the Danube River Basin since the Danube River Protection Convention was signed in 1994 - by the countries with territories above 2000 km2 from the watershed -and ICPDR was established by the Contracting Parties. (ICPDR 2015a). The severe floods of 2002 made thousands of people homeless, caused casualities and several thousand million Euro damage in many countries across Europe. European Union Solidarity Fund (EUSF) was set up to support EU member states and accession countries by offering financial support after major natural disasters. The Fund was created in the wake of the floods. The informal meeting of Water Directors of the EU and Candidate Countries after the flood decided to collect best practices on flood prediction, prevention and mitigation in 2003 as an update of the UNECE Guideline on Sustainable Flood Prevention (IWDM2003). National administrative and legislative provisions were done like the German Flood Protection Act in 2005 (Thieken et al. 2016). On European level since 2007 the EU Floods Directive’s (2007/60/EC) main objective to require member states to assess and manage risks of flooding and to develop flood risk management plans. Plans are restricted to areas considered at high risk of floods, these are not integrated into other types of plans and maps available, nor are they used for developing preparedness response measures in advance of an accident or natural disaster, such as in the case of the Seveso Directive (2012/18/EU). Though the Floods Directive was expected to reduce flood risk, experts voiced disappointment regarding the limitations of integrating disaster risk more broadly, particularly in relation to water quality and accidental pollution (McClain et al. 2016). In May and June 2013, much of Central Europe was affected by extreme flooding again in many areas: causing damages to houses, infrastructure, and services. Though the floods were more severe and more extensive, total direct damage was 9.6 billion EUR in Germany, Czech Republic and Austria. It was less than that of the floods in 2002, particularly in Austria and the Czech Republic. This is partly due to the effectiveness of flood protection and risk control measures being introduced since 2002 (EC Press Release 2013). One year later the floods in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia caused 3.65 billion EUR damage (15% of the GDP in BiH that year) and more than 2.6 million people were affected, 137.000 evacuated and 79 casualties occured (COWI-IPF 2015, Tadjbakhsh et al. 2016). These circumstances indicated strong societal and political will for basin-wide actions to strenghten regional and cross-border co-operation. Danube countries also
