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

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Viktor György Oroszi et al: Flood management education in the Danube basin - needs and challenges

forensics and domestic sciences. One of the most important school subjects in which natural hazards are being taught is geography. Geography textbooks transmit knowledge about landscape phenomena and processes as well as social developments and problems of hazards. Therefore, a horizontal content analysis of 166 secondary- school geography textbooks from 36 countries - including 12 from the Danube basin - was conducted in 2013 by Komac et al. Research findings reported that on average 3.1% of the pages are dedicated to natural disasters in the examined 36 countries.

However, this ratio is lower (only 2,71%) in the Danube basin (Table 4). Approximately 80% of the pages describing natural disasters present various forms of natural hazards. Descriptions of risk assessment, prevention, rescue methods, types of renovation, and complex or problem-based descriptions are less common. The largest share of specific descriptions is dedicated to earthquakes (23.2 %) and volcanic eruptions (21.2 %), followed by floods (18.1 %), erosion (14.5 %), landslides and rock falls (7.9 %), storms (7.1 %), droughts (3.5 %), and avalanches (2.5 %). The least discussed topics are the impact of tidal waves and tsunamis (1.1%), and forest fires (0.8 %). The textbooks do not mention the effects of extremely high temperatures (heat waves) and extremely low temperatures (frost, glaze ice). Comparing the

descriptions of natural disasters in textbooks with the actual occurrence of natural disasters in Europe in the past century volcanic eruptions are significantly overrepresented. Only a third of the pages contain descriptions of earthquakes, however these have caused the largest number of victims (89%) and a third of the total damage. In the past hundred years, floods have been extremely frequent in Europe (representing nearly 40% of all disasters), causing 44% of the total damage. Therefore, it seems more than appropriate that nearly a fifth of all the pages are dedicated to floods. Storms, which are very frequent (24% of all the events), are only described on 9% of the pages, which means they are underestimated considering they have caused 19% of damage and 2% of victims in Europe. Landslides are described on 10% of the pages, and are thus covered well, given the frequency (8%), the number of victims (5%), and damage (1%). Very little space (1 %) is dedicated to forest fires, even though based on the frequency (7 %) of their occurrence (Komac 2013).

The highest percent of textbooks is dedicated to natural hazards in Romania (6,02%), Germany (4,72%) and Slovenia (4,09%). Less than 1% of the investigated geography textbooks highlights hazards in Czech Republic (0,53%) and Ukraine (0,33%) and no pages were found in Slovakia mentioning floods or any other natural disasters.

Table 4. Natural hazard descriptions in Geography textbooks of the Danube basin ______ (edited by the authors based on the data of Komac et al. 2013)________

Country

No. of textNo. of textNo. of pages containing descripShare of pages containing descripbooks

book pages

tions of natural disasters

tions of natural disasters

Austria

4

911

19

2,09

Bosnia&Herzegovina

6

1 083

21

1,94

Bulgaria

no data

no data

no data

no data

Croatia

4

748

n

1,47

Czech Republic

3

374

2

0,53

Germany

10

2 226

105

4,72

Hungary

7

1 225

35

2,86

Moldova

3

714

14

1,96

Montenegro

no data

no data

no data

no data

Romania

3

399

24

6,02

Serbia

5

1 020

36

3,53

Slovakia

3

254

0

0

Slovenia

7

831

34

4,09

Ukraine

6

1 514

5

0,33

Total

61

11299

306

2,71

NEEDS AND CHALLENGES - COMMON FINDINGS OF A WORKSHOP

EUSDR PA5 (Environmental risks) and the Faculty of Water Sciences of the National University of Public Service organized a workshop on the International Danube Day (29/06/2017) in Budapest. The workshop brought together the related EUSDR priority areas namely PA7 (Knowledge Society) and PA9 (People&Skills), the representatives of universities, vocational schools, water directorates and SMEs being interested in education of flood management in order to discuss the problems, needs and possibilities in this field.

The participants also shared their education experiences related to flood protection, and they also presented previous project outcomes and recent initiations.

Attendants were informed about the forthcoming funding possibilities of different programmes like ERASMUS+, CEEPUS, DAAD, Horizon2020 in order to start a discussion and set up a network of institutes to establish an international flood protection education network in the region, the importance of which was identified by several countries in the 1st Flood Risk Management Plan of the Danube Basin (DFRMP).

The opinions and experiences of the participating 32 experts from 6 countries of the Danube region have been summarized in a Common Findings document by PA5 Hungarian coordination (EUSDR PA5 2017). A short list of international education programmes and projects was alsocollected which is related to the activities of the participants. The key messages will be communicated to