WHY TO HAVE A PROJECT ABOUT DROUGHT?

Even though drought events are becoming more frequent and intense in the Danube region, they still seem to catch us unprepared. We remain reactive in our actions and any measures are carried out only when drought has already developed. Each time a drought occurs, mostly the same issues are raised in the region, such as: “How much damage was inflicted, on whom, where? Who is going to pay for it? How can we prevent or at least reduce impacts and damages of the drought and their costs in the future?” And yet the drought is not considered an issue of high priority despite all the impacts. 

This is our WHY, HOW and WHAT we do: 

Learn more about the project from the interview with the DriDanube Project Manager, Ms Andreja Sušnik here and from our webpage http://dtp.interreg-danube.eu/dridanube.

	Drought 2017 in the Danube region – a bitter reminder of our unpreparedness

The summer 2017 has bitterly reminded us why it is more than urgent to act in the field of drought management. This year, significant parts of the Danube region were hit by drought and affected different water-dependent economic sectors, vegetation and water resources. 

Many people still consider drought to be a rare phenomenon in our region but in fact it is becoming a regular feature of the climate. 2017 was just the latest in a series of significant drought events which also occurred in the region in 2015, 2012, 2007, 2003, etc. Read more about the impacts of this year’s drought in our article.

	DriDanube project in its first 9 months

DriDanube project started its journey by identifying and interacting with the main stakeholders on national and regional level. Kick-off conference on a regional level and Briefing seminars on a national level were organized in order to present the projects to the target groups and get their first feedbacks on planned outputs.  

Partners, with the help of Associated Strategic Partners and stakeholders collected information on the current status of the drought monitoring, drought risk assessment and drought management in the Danube Region. All partners started to work on collecting yield data and historical data about drought impacts and identifying drought impacts reporters which will help to create additional database on actual and real information about drought impacts on the field.  

Kick-off conference
The first DriDanube Project Meeting and Kick-off Conference were held on 15-16th March 2017 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The Kick-off conference brought together almost 90 participants such as project partners, representatives of the Ministries, water authorities, Universities, EU Strategy for the Danube Region and Joint Research Centre of the EC. More details can be found here.

	What solution is DriDanube bringing

How to improve capacity of the Danube region for drought emergency response in practice? What will remain after the project ends that would enhance our preparedness for drought management?
We are developing an innovative and interactive tool, The Drought User Service (DUS), which will enable more accurate and efficient drought monitoring and early warning for the entire Danube region. It will include a set of Earth Observation data from a range of operational remote sensing satellites, which are processed into ready-to-use drought information, available to the general public with a web-browser interface. With this service, the operational day-to-day work of national authorities, and end users such as farmers or water managers, will be improved in all phases of drought-related disaster management (from monitoring, forecasting and evaluation to response). 

Simplified Drought User Service scheme 

Find out more about our innovative tool and the project partners who are developing it here.

	Upcoming events

Check our calendar for events we are planning to organize or get involved in. 

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