The Kick-Off Meeting of the SIMONA project was held in Ljubljana on September 18th and 19th, 2018 at Geological Survey of Slovenia, Dimičeva ulica 14, Slovenia. About 60 paticipants representing the 17 partners and 8 Associated Strategic Partner from Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine. Four Associated Strategic Partners from Germany, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine could not participate in the Kick-off event.

The meeting was organized by the GeoZS with the following aims:

• To get the SIMONA consortium together in person;
• To share the most important information about the project and have a common overview of the upcoming tasks;
• To relate the project with international organisations such as ICPDR (International Commussion for the Protection of the Danube River), ISRBC (International Sava River Basin Commission), EUSDR (EU Strategy for the Danube Region);
• To set out the four control levels: Advisory Board (AB), Steering Committee (SCOM), Quality Assurance Management Board (QMB), Working Groups (WGs);
• To strengthen the DTP Project Capitalisation Strategy.

During the two days of the meeting, all the Work Packages leaders (WPLs) gave a short overview of their work packages, the main goals, results and outputs. All received information was very useful and helpful to both, Project Partners and Associated Strategic Partners regarding better understanding of the project main vision, structure and objectives, and also, in a broader context, to the related main international organisations in the Danube River Basin in a broader context.