A catalogue of the flood forecasting practices in the Danube River Basin

Abstract

Floods are one of the most devastating natural disasters that can cause large economic damage and endanger human lives. Flood forecasting is one of the flood risk mitigation measures serving to protect human lives and social estate. The Danube River Basin (DRB) is the world's most international river basin, flowing through the territory of 19 countries, covering more than 800,000 km 2 . The frequency of floods in the DRB increased in the last decades, urging the need for a more effective and harmonized regional and cross-border cooperation in the field of flood forecasting.Reliable and comprehensive hydrologic data are the basis of flood forecasting. This paper provides an overview of the national flood forecasting systems in the DRB.Detailed information about meteorological and hydrological measurements, flood modelling, forecasting, and flood warnings is provided for 12 countries that cover almost 95% of the total DRB area. Notably, significant differences exist among the countries in terms of the measuring network density, the models used as well as forecasting and warnings methodology. These differences can be attributed to the geographical and climatological setting, political situation, historical forecasting development, etc. It can be seen that there is still much room left for improvements of measurement networks (e.g., density, measured parameters) and models used that could be improved to enhance the flood forecasting in the DRB.

Exploring Options for Flood Risk Management with Special Focus on Retention Reservoirs

“…It should be noted that the modelled Ljubljanica river catchment can be characterized by complex land-use patterns and heterogeneous hydrogeology with karst characteristics [53,55]. More complex model would need to be set-up if the aim of the study would be to define the model that is used for flood forecasting [13]. Nevertheless, according to the calculated efficiency criteria the model performance can be defined as satisfactory or even as excellent according to some guidelines [64,65].…”

“…Therefore, different structural and non-structural measures will inevitably need to be implemented to cope with the increasing flood risk [10][11][12]. Flood forecasting can be one of the solutions to warn people living in flood hazard areas [13][14][15] in the case that prevention measures are not sufficient or cannot be implemented. Efficient flood forecasting requires good input data for model setup and conducting forecasts.…”

Flood Forecasting in Malawi's Shire River Basin

“…Therefore, strengthening the Flood Forecasting Systems (FFSs) is necessary to predict water-related disasters to reduce human loss and property, and environmental damage (Bezak et al, 2021;Prada, 2016). Effective flood forecasting systems also encourage communities to proactively develop infrastructure and emergency response systems to mitigate damage and deaths from flooding.…”