NEWSLETTER, ISSUE 4, MAY 2019

Welcome to the fourth DriDanube newsletter!

In this issue you can read about:

• DriDanube Final conference - Danube Drought Conference, 7-8 May 2019 in Vienna
• Drought Watch – what is the newly developed drought monitoring tool about and how to use it
• Drought risk assessment – newly developed methodology and drought risk maps 
• Efforts of DriDanube partners to sustain the project results

	DANUBE DROUGHT CONFERENCE

To present the DriDanube results and emphasize the importance of cooperation in the area of drought management, DriDanube partners joined forces with the Drought Management Center for Southeastern Europe (DMCSEE) and the Integrated Drought Management Programme in Central and Eastern Europe (IDMP CEE) to organize a unique drought event in the region - Danube Drought Conference that is to take place on 7-8 May 2019 in Vienna. 

The conference will focus on challenges and proactive approach in drought management in the Danube region involving speakers and participants from a wide range of stakeholders dealing with drought. Check HERE for more details about the conference concept and programme. To read the press release, click HERE.

	DROUGHT WATCH – WHAT IS IT AND HOW TO USE IT?

Since the beginning of the project we have written several articles about one of the DriDanube’s main outputs - an innovative drought monitoring tool Drought Watch. Why do we actually need such a tool?
“We have to build better understanding of drought and awareness of its impacts already in its early stages. DriDanube project has developed a tool that will help to detect drought at early stages. Based on this knowledge further actions need to be taken in order to manage potential drought impacts already before they occur. “ Andreja Sušnik, DriDanube Project Manager. 

To understand how Drought Watch functions and what data it involves, check our new self-explanatory video about the tool.   Drought Watch is freely accessible at http://www.droughtwatch.eu/

Since Drought Watch offers diverse functionalities and displays various drought related datasets, to help the users to efficiently work with the tool we also prepared a Video Tutorial that provides clear instruction how to use its components to analyse a drought event.

Drought Watch prototype was prepared already in the spring 2018 and DriDanube partners tested its use by monitoring the drought situation during a 4-month summer Drought 2018 Watch campaign and in the beginning of 2019.

Beginning of the 2019 vegetation season has been marked with the signals of drought appearing throughout the Danube region. Learn more HERE about the drought situation in the Danube region in our latest Regional drought situation review (January – April 2019).

	Drought Risk Assessment

Risk assessment and mapping of the drought risk are key parts of the successful drought risk management process as they are enhancing disaster prevention and preparedness and contribute significantly to planning and capacity building. From regional perspective it is desirable to have a unified drought risk assessment comparable among countries of the Danube region as it will facilitate co-operation in efforts to prevent and mitigate shared drought risks, such as cross-border drought risks.

Read more HERE about the DriDanube drought risk assessment methodology that was developed for the purpose of preparing the regional drought risk maps for the selected crops.

	Efforts for a drought resilient Danube region

DriDanube project partners met on an additional 5th project meeting on 24-25th January 2019 in Brno, Czech Republic. With all the efforts invested in the development of Drought Watch and a region-wide network of drought impact reporters (that has in the meantime exceeded 1,000 registered reporters), the aim of the meeting was to discuss the sustainability of these project results after the project end – read more HERE.

During the last implementation period, a special focus was also paid to integration of the project results into daily operational work of the project stakeholders that will assure the project’s sustainability. This was done through the series of national final drought seminars that brought together a wide range of national stakeholders in all 10 DriDanube countries to present and discuss the use and improvement of the newly developed tools – learn more HERE.

 
Croatia, National Final Drought Seminar, 2 April 2019, Zagreb

	WHO WE ARE

Introduction of the project partners
In each issue of our Newsletter we would like to introduce you some of our project partners.
This time we are introducing:

The Faculty of Agriculture, University of Novi Sad (FAUNS)
FAUNS is a leading higher education and scientific institution in agriculture and related fields in Serbia, with a strong interdisciplinary and application driven research approach. It consists of 8 departments and organizes all three levels of studies: bachelor, master and doctoral. Students are offered 13 undergraduate, 16 master and 3 doctoral study programmes. The Faculty has a long track record of leading and participating in numerous national and international research projects (on-going Water@Risk, MyToolBox, AgriReg, INFRAVEC2 , EVO-NANO, SETOF, etc). Since the sector of agriculture in Serbia is of the highest national priority as a top exporter with strong interest to minimize the drought impacts on agricultural production, participation of FAUNS in the DriDanube project will help in creating proactive, efficient and operative drought management framework on national level. Within the DriDanube project, focus of the FAUNS staff, with long and rich experience in the field of drought monitoring, forecasting, and management, as well as in the related risk evaluation and mapping, is on enhancing methodology for spatial and temporal assessment of drought risk. More information at https://www.uns.ac.rs/index.php/en/

The Szent István University (SZIU)
SZIU, the main agriculture-oriented university of Hungary, consists of seven different faculties for study and research. The Department of Water Management (SZIU-DWM) is a newly re-established unit focusing on application of modern techniques, such as GIS, RS and integrated modelling to address issues related both to water quantity and quality. The scientists of the department have a long-term experience on the field of drought investigation. On international level, a narrow co-operation has been developed with the Joint Research Centre (Ispra), UNCCD, World Meteorological Organisation, DMCSEE.
SZIU is in close cooperation with drought connected organisations, e.g. Hungarian Irrigation Society and Hungarian National Committee of International Committee on Irrigation and Drainage.
On academic level, SZIU represents the drought issue in several scientific committees of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, e.g. meteorological, hydrological. On the data issue, the common work with the JRC EDO resulted in freely available, gridded long-term series of several drought indices in the Carpathian region. More information at http://sziu.hu/

Republic Srpska Hydro-meteorological Service (RHMZ RS)
RHMZ RS is a government agency under the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management that performs professional and other tasks related to the development and functioning of the hydrological, meteorological and seismological activity; study of the atmosphere, water resources, air and water quality and seismological processes; collecting, processing and publishing of hydro-meteorological and seismological data and carrying out other duties in the field of hydrology, meteorology and seismology. The organization has a long-term cooperation with DMCSEE in Ljubljana in building capacities to implement and use drought monitoring tools such as SPI index. DriDanube objectives are hence closely related to the institution’s aim of strengthening the capacity to monitor and building an early warning system for drought.
RHMZ RS is present in the WMO through the Permanent Representative of B&H. In addition, the RHMZ RS is part of the European meteoalarm and SEECOP South East European Consortium. Within the Republic of Srpska, the Institute is very active in many projects and cooperates with many institutions. Cooperation takes place with the Institute of Agriculture, the advisory service of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management, the Institute for Environmental Protection, the Faculty of Agriculture and PMF faculty, the Geological Institute and many other institutions. More information at https://rhmzrs.com/

You can read more about our partners introduced in previous issues: Newsletter #1, Newsletter #2 and Newletter #3.

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