FLOOD-WISE

European border regions regularly suffer from major floods, causing fatalities, displacement of people, great economic losses and large impact on nature. Floods often create cross border problems between countries, regions and institutions. It is widely recognized that effective flood management requires cooperation within the river basin. FLOOD-WISE lasted for three years (2010–2012). Overall objective of the FLOOD WISE project is identification, sharing and transfer of good practices on sustainable cross-border flood management in European river basins, using the instruments of the FRMD. Therefore, the project is divided in three phases, following the steps of the FRMD and addressing the three different flood risk management tools: a. Flood risk assessment, b. Flood risk mapping, c. Flood risk management plans. The overall objective is reinforced by the integration of other EU directives and national policies, taking into account the hydrological, ecological and socio-economic functions of the river. By incorporating the cultural and political dimensions, carrying out pilot actions, the project is expected to result in a higher willingness of responsible authorities to develop harmonized or joint flood strategies and policy measures across borders within the frameworks of EU and national policies and regulation. The project will result in river basin reports on flood related issues, good practices and solutions, joint recommendations to the European Commission, Member States and relevant stakeholders, a digital information exchange platform and actions plans per river basin for the future implementation of the project’s results.

Now that the FLOOD-WISE has come to an end as a project, the FLOOD-WISE Network remains. Its partners invite you to learn from their experiences during the project and view and download the results and products from this website. All materials are free to download and use.

FLOOD-WISE was a European funded project in which water managers from various European countries exchanged experiences with flood risk management. The objective of the project FLOOD-WISE is to improve cross-border flood risk management based on experiences and lessons learnt in six European river basins: Meuse, Rur, Elbe,Western Bug, Sotla and Szamos.

The conclusions and recommendations are fully described and explained in the FLOOD-WISE final report “Towards cross-border flood risk management”. Recommendations are addressed to the following levels:

– European Union

– National Governments

– Regional and local authorities

It would be very helpful to the European countries if the Floods Directive would be supported by a catalogue of potential objectives and related measures, including experiences and good practices already available. The WISE-RTD web portal provides an excellent tool to support this approach, facilitating the exchange and retrieval of good practices. Transboundary river basins will benefit from international river basin commissions to set up and carry out integrated river basin management directed at flood and water quality issues across borders. Through these commissions single sided measures can be avoided, and opportunities to harmonize cost recovery, spatial planning, public participation and communication pave the way to real cross border cooperation. Measures that include spatial planning restrictions should be enforced with priority, because integrated flood risk management depends on all links of the chain to be in place and equally strong