The first DanubeSediment project kick-off meeting took place on March 8th and 9th, 2017 at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME) in Budapest, Hungary. Around 40 participants came together from all 9 partner countries and 14 project partners.

János Józsa, Rector of University of Technology and Economics, Budapest and Barbara Kéri (BME-project manager as lead partner) welcomed the participants, while Igor Liska, Technical Expert for Water Quality and Water management at ICPDR (International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River) emphasized the interest in and the support of ICPDR for DanubeSediment.

During the two days of the workshop, all six Work Package (WP) leaders gave a short overview of their work packages, goals, expected results and outputs. In the following sessions, details on project management, communication and the first technical work package “data collection” were discussed. During these sessions, specific questions were addressed in order to synchronize the work and to avoid overlaps between the work packages. Topics of discussion concerned e.g. the tributaries to be included in data collection or the extension of the list of stakeholders interested in the project, such as riparian communities, agriculture, and water production.

Project partners agreed that the two days were very helpful to get to know each other and to receive information on the different work packages. The partners scheduled their next meeting for June 2017.

Photos can be found in our gallery.