As part of the programme in the periodic partner meeting in Vienna 4-5-6 February 2019, a special session took place focusing only on the concept of hydrological data collection, sharing and potential use within the framework of Dareffort.

In the data providers conference, project partners have welcome the progress in work package 3, collecting and analysing the sources and characteristics of national hydrological data.

As Philipp Liedl from STASA emphasized, a crucial point of the project is not only technically enable the collection of the data, but to create a responsible and safe system which fulfills all the national requirements, and can be authorised by all national data providers. Participants at the conference discussed, how to define the set of data that would be necessary to be involved in the international collection. Igor Liska from the ICPDR stressed out that there is no minimal data request from ICPDR, and participants have to accept if a partner can negotiate only a fewer set of data on national level, which does not mean automatically that other countries need to leave out such type of data as well. Likewise, harmonising warning levels is also not necessary. He also noted that the Danube HIS agreement refers to the collection of meteorological and hydrological data for flood forecast and scientific purposes as a requirement.

Zoran Major reminded the partners that the purpose of Dareffort is to prepare the background for data collection and sharing, make suggestions and create a pilot for forecasting, but not to develop a working flood forecasting system. Founding a safe and reliable system for data exchange is more important than getting committed to one type of forecasting methodology. As Zoltán Bálint explained: suggestions are not enough, a functional pilot prototype is required to be prepared at the end of the project.

Levente Peres, IT-expert from Viziterv-Environ described the common data-exchange engine, called Hymedes, which can be a suitable platform for data provision and exchange between partners.