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WATER COOPERATION, SUSTAINABILITY AND POVERTY ERADICATIONExamples of cooperation in the Czech Republicflood forecasting and information serviceJan Danhelka, Eva Soukalova and Lucie Brezkova, Czech Hydrometeorological Institute;and Jan Cernik, Czech Development AgencyFlood protection is a major part of practical water managementand a way of reducing the damage caused by themost prominent type of natural disaster in CentralEurope. In the Czech Republic flood protection, especiallyforecasting and information services, involves cooperation atvarious levels from local to international.In the aftermath of the disastrous 1997 floods, hydrological forecastingmodels have been developed. The 2002 floods triggered, amongother things, a change in data measurement and data transmissionfrom meteorological and hydrological stations. In response to the2009 flash floods, many local warning systems have been installed.Providing information to municipalitiesThe national network of water gauging sites, which is operatedby the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute (CHMI), consists ofalmost 400 stations equipped with automatic monitoring systemsfeaturing online data transmission to the central database over amobile telephone network (using GPRS protocol). The stations’An example of a warning SMS from station Predlance at Smeda River (northern Bohemia)Image: CHMIother function is to transmit short text messages(SMS) notifying of major events registered at thestation. For the needs of CHMI, as the operator ofthe stations, such notifications also include informationabout the technical condition of the station (forexample, the back-up battery voltage), which helpsto support the operation of the measuring network.However, the key pieces of information are those thatindicate that the threshold water stages, correspondingto the flood levels at each particular site, havebeen exceeded.CHMI approached regional and local flood controlauthorities (in the Czech Republic, these are regionalauthorities and municipal authorities administeringregions and municipalities). The institute offeredthem inclusion in its distribution list of specified textmessages. A number of users subscribe to this freeservice as the quickest method of notification that doesnot suffer from delays in the delivery of informationduring central data processing.CHMI publishes observed water stages, dischargesand precipitation on its web page for the generalpublic with an update frequency of 10 minutes. 1In addition, CHMI provides two special non-publicwebsites with the water stage data to ensure its availabilityeven in case of overload of the public website.However, recent flash floods affected many smallstreams that are not covered by the national monitoringnetwork. A programme of developing localwarning systems, targeted at small watercourses atrisk of flash floods but not monitored in the nationalmonitoring system, was established. This has beensuccessful thanks to experience with the above systemof data transmission. Since 2009, a total of 341 projectshave been supported through this programme underthe Operational Programme Environment, which ismanaged by the Ministry of the Environment as thenational flood protection authority.International cooperation in the forecasting serviceA total of 19 countries share the Danube basin,making it the basin shared by the largest numberof countries. One of these is the Czech Republic,through which the Danube does not actually flow;however, the Czech Republic contains approximately[ 245 ]