Flood risk maps were presented for five Albanian water basins, developed in accordance with the EU Floods Directive as part of the PRO NEWS project
Over the course of two days, at the end of May, the online workshop “Presentation of flood risk mapping for the main basins, Ishem, Erzen, Shkumbin, Seman and Vjosa” was held as part of the PRO NEWS project, which presented the work on the first construction of flood risk maps for five water basins in Albania.
The PRO NEWS project, started in 2017, aims to reduce flood risk in Albania by working on several fronts, from the support for the implementation of national legislation, to the development of an Early Warning System for warning and the dissemination of knowledge to the population, in order to encourage good practices against risk. Among the components of the project there is included the risk mapping of five of the seven main water basins of the country, in accordance with the Floods Directive of the European Union. This mapping was presented on May 26th and 27th in an online workshop that saw more than 130 participants from the different Albanian institutions involved or responsible for the management of the water basins.
“Of the seven main Albanian water basins, two are currently being studied by other European projects, while PRO NEWS focused on the remaining five”, explains Miranda Deda, director of the Albanian branch of CIMA Research Foundation. “The maps presented at the workshop were developed using the Continuum hydrological model. CIMA Research Foundation researchers, with Simone Gabellani at the helm, have been working for more than two years on three fronts: the validation and digitization of hydro-meteorological data, the calibration of the model in the basins under examination, and finally carrying out measurement campaigns on the five rivers.” This work has had an important contribution from the Hydro-meteorological Institute of Tirana (Insttuti i Geoshkencave, Energjise, Ujit and Mjedisit).
“The first part of this work, the definition of high flood risk rivers, was presented almost exactly one year ago, in April 2019”, continues the researcher. Now, the new maps can be brought to Albanian institutions to collect their observations: the integrated result will be presented in July to be made available to the National Water Agency (Agjensia Kombetare and Menaxhimit te Burimeve Ujore).
“Despite the inevitable slowdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we managed to complete an essential component of the project, presenting—for the first time in the history of Albania—flood risk maps for the country’s most important water basins”, concludes Deda.