The DAREFFORT project has had its 1st Periodic Meeting from 4-6 February in Vienna, Austria.

The DAREFFORT project (Development of the DAnube RivEr basin Flood FORecasTing – funded through the Interreg Danube Transnational Programme) is an initiative to implement a mutually adopted flood risk mitigation measures in a joint and sustainable way on the Danube catchment level. During the three year implementation period the purpose is to establish a standardized international hydro-meteorological data exchange platform which can improve the quality and efficiency of national forecast services. This will feed in a public near real time system – DanubeHIS by the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR) – that provides data for flood risk management or for any water related scientific activities.

The DAREFFORT consortium consist of 11 partners, many of which are also EFAS partners. The European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), together with the ICPDR, the International Sava River Basin Commission and the World Meteorological Organization are associated strategic partner (ASP) to the project. The JRCs main role as ASP is to ensure that the developments in DAREFFORT are linked with the relevant European initiatives and especially the Copernicus EFAS and to share the experience in hydro-meteorological data collection and exchange at a European level.

During the 1st periodic partner meeting and the 1st Biennial Danube Forecasting Forum a review of existing flood forecasting systems of the Danube river basins was performed, including the only Danube-wide forecasting system EFAS. Furthermore, discussions were held on the minimum and maximum data availability as well as additional needs and requirements. The shared experience from EFAS in setting up a similar data collection system which includes a large number of data providers was highly appreciated. Furthermore, EFAS could be used as a test candidate for the data exchange platform which will be developed in DAREFFORT.

Find out more about DAREFFORT: http://www.interreg-danube.eu/approved-projects/dareffort