Drought Risk in the Danube Region

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Water scarcity and droughts hit the Danube region frequently and have had large impacts on the economy and welfare of the people. Despite damages in last decades, drought is still not considered as an issue of high priority. People are not aware of its impacts. Therefore, DriDanube aims to improve capacity of the region for drought emergency response and enhance preparedness for drought management by introducing recently developed monitoring and risk assessment tools. Cooperative and interactive Drought User Service will be developed in order to enable more accurate and efficient drought early warning. Service will integrate all available data, including large volume of the most recent remote sensing products. Technologically, Drought User Service will be developed using modern web services and “Big Data” management techniques. Apart from the timely warning a risk analysis is required to effectively reduce the effects of drought. Following a transnational approach, DriDanube will harmonize the currently heterogeneous methodologies for risk and impact assessments, based on existing achievements in participating countries and on EU guidelines in the frame of the Civil Protection Mechanism. Users’ capacities at different level (policy, professional, stakeholders) in the management cycle will be strengthened through sharing experiences and project learning interactions. DriDanube Strategy to improve drought emergency response (tested on pilot actions) will be the basis for more efficient drought management cycle (monitoring–impact assessment–response–recovery–preparedness) in the region. DriDanube aims to change mainly ad-hoc drought response to pro-active response based on risk management procedures. Cooperation among all relevant institutions will be strengthen leading to increase culture of preparedness throughout the Danube region.

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