Toponyms: a neglected asset within the water framework and flood directives implementation process; the case study of Greece

Abstract

Proxy data and qualitative information are important assets in water resources and floods management. In the research, the river water bodies with characteristic toponyms (hydronyms) in Greece that potentially reflect the water’s quality or the occurrence of floods are evaluated in comparison to the European Union’s (EU) Water Framework and Flood Directives implementation process outputs. For doing so, after identifying the river water bodies with characteristic toponyms which form the 10.2% of the Greek water bodies, the toponyms are cross correlated with the water bodies quality status as retrieved by the Directives’ databases to validate the existence of linkages between the names and the quality. Similarly, the significant floods, as derived from the Flood Directive, are spatially allied with the water bodies with characteristic toponyms to ground truth the connection between significant floods and water bodies whose toponyms imply flood prone areas. The research outputs indicate a high degree of correlation both in terms of water quality and floods, meaning that in almost all cases the water body toponym depicts the good or bad quality of the water body or the occurrence of flood events. Moreover, it is established that almost 90% of the water bodies with characteristic names are intermittent and ephemeral ones. The water bodies’ toponyms, hence, are proposed as an auxiliary criterion during the Directives implementation process that could foster increased water quality and flood-related knowledge, especially in intermittent and ephemeral water bodies which are generally lacking observations, and can be applied not only in all EU-Member States’ waters, but also in global scale.

Hydrological simulation of ungauged basins via forcing by large‐scale hydrology models

“…Although the water governance in EU Member States is driven by the WFD (Skoulikaris, 2022) (Arle et al, 2016). This setup poses a challenge for intermittent and ephemeral rivers, as their monitoring and understanding are more limited, and the evolution of extreme events occurrence may not be adequately captured (Nones & Pescaroli, 2016).…”

“…The sequential steps for this process are The proposed methodology is applied in the River Basin District (RBDs) of Central Macedonia (EL10) that constitutes one of the 14 designated RBDS in Greece, Figure 1. EL10 covers an area of 10163.38 km 2 and is divided in 4 River Basins' Areas (RBAs) (Skoulikaris, 2022;Special Secretariat for Water, 2018), Table 1. The RBAs are further subdivided in river basins and subbasins.…”

Exploring the link between drought‐related terms and public interests: Global insights from LSTM‐based predictions and Google Trends analysis

“…Recently, researchers have been interested in exploring the connection between specific terms or names (e.g., toponyms) and relevant phenomena (e.g., water quality and floods) (Hering et al, 2018;Skoulikaris, 2023)…”

“…Recently, researchers have been interested in exploring the connection between specific terms or names (e.g., toponyms) and relevant phenomena (e.g., water quality and floods) (Hering et al, 2018; Skoulikaris, 2023). The main objective of this study is to develop a model for predicting public interest in some water quantity issues based on Google Trends data.…”

Result-Based Management Tool for the Assessment of Existing Structural Flood Protection and Future Planning; Case Study in the Strymon River Basin, Greece

“…A results-based approach offers a tool for priority-based planning in which the initial cost of investment in the construction of flood protection work is related to the potential economic failure consequences and the repeated costs of maintenance. Numerous flood events, with an increasing tense of occurrence in the last decade [6] is presented in the case study area, with Figure 1 presenting all the flood events during the period 2012-2018 where official data are available [7].…”