Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - DAREnet (DAnube river region Resillience Exchange network)

Teaser

Many areas along the Danube flow are exposed to high flood risks, as illustrated by the seven major damaging floods, which occurred in the Danube River Basin between 2002 and 2014, which caused enormous damages and losses of life. For the future, it is expected that the...

Summary

Many areas along the Danube flow are exposed to high flood risks, as illustrated by the seven major damaging floods, which occurred in the Danube River Basin between 2002 and 2014, which caused enormous damages and losses of life. For the future, it is expected that the general flood risk for the Danube region will continue to increase as a result of climate change. Moreover, the number of people and economic assets affected will rise. Practitioners will have to adapt fast to this increasing risk as well as keeping pace with an ever faster changing society. In this context, research, development and innovation (RDI) become key-drivers for improving performance and effectiveness of flood response across borders and disciplines, and thereby creating new possibilities to deepen and enhance flood response cooperation throughout the entire region.
Against this background, the mission of the DAREnet project is to support flood practitioners, dealing with Danube flood prevention, response and recovery, across different disciplines and borders, to deepen and broaden their Research, Development and Innovation related collaboration. In particular, DAREnet will enable practitioners to develop joint and coordinated RDI Initiatives, addressing both, common and specific gaps or needs in the practice of flood prevention and response. These initiatives will be conceived, developed and steered by practitioners and will thereby strengthen sustainably flood resilience and practitioner collaboration in the Danube River region.
To achieve this mission, DAREnet is targeting at five distinct objectives:
• To fully deploy the DAREnet Network concept involving a broad range of civil protection professions and organisations from all countries of the Danube catchment;
• To identify, assess and prioritise research and innovation results that have the potential of being useful, usable and used by practitioners;
• To develop and update on a yearly basis an RDI Roadmap for the entire region enabling practitioners to drive the uptake of new solutions through own initiatives;
• To fully involve all strategic stakeholders in the process, in particular the EUCPM, EUSDR, and to build a long-term partnership for the implementation of the DAREnet RDI Roadmap and Initiatives;
• To establish collaborative innovation as a sustainable region-wide, collective practice.

Work performed

With regards to network and community building, DAREnet has set up and staffed the Network Secretariat in order to coordinate and monitor national efforts in network building. The DAREnet National Contacts (DNC), responsible for coordinating the national networks within DAREnet started establishing their national communities of practitioners in their respective countries. To date, the national networks include a large spectrum of flood management practitioners as well as external experts from academia and industry. First successful efforts have been made to connect the national networks with other relevant national and international networks. Preparations for the setup of the Regional Steering Board – a governance body consisting of representatives from national disaster management authorities that is being consulted about the political dimension of the selected innovations – have been made.
With respect to the elaboration of the RDI Roadmap, DAREnet collected and published a set of challenges and identified potential RDI Topics in a collaborative effort. DAREnet has successfully set up a common exchange platform and process for innovators (academia, industry and innovating practitioners) to communicate about concepts, prototypes and solutions. This platform also enables for collecting the identified innovations in a knowledge base, accessible for all members of the platform. Moreover, Topic Working Groups have been established for reviewing and analysing existing solutions (RDI activities, products & services on the market, best practice of practitioners) in order to enable the development of a transparent, verifiable and practitioner-centred assessment procedure for prioritising innovation opportunities.
DAREnet could establish contacts to relevant European projects and initiatives and exchange information and best practices. DAREnet started connecting and collaborating with representatives of strategic stakeholder organisations (European, regional, national, local), a good relation to the EUSDR Priority Area A5 (Environmental risks) dealing with flood risks and management in the Danube Region could be established as well as initial contact to CEN/TC391, highly relevant for standardisation issues.
Finally, DAREnet created a comprehensive set of communication materials and tools, including a public web site, a multi-lingual project video, flyers, posters and roll-ups to support the networking and exchange in the project and to increase its outreach.

Final results

Practitioners, who are concerned by Danube flood resilience, are confronted with the challenges of global climate change on Danube floods and more generally the protection of lives and economic assets in the Danube region. Innovation is critical for being able to cope with these challenges and this will be one of the key factors determining the future security of the populations in the main flood risk zones. Much practitioner innovation potential is wasted today by insufficient collaboration at the innovation stage, by innovation which is market-pushed rather than pulled by challenges, by innovation which is not effectively taken up by the potential beneficiaries. The DAREnet Community will address this gap by working towards more articulated and coordinated uptake of flood management innovations that will positively impact society and will be sustainable in the long-term.
By the end of project – and potentially even before - DAREnet will increase the innovation capacity in the area of civil protection, with a special focus on global flood resilience of the Danube region countries by providing a collaborative environment for different flood management stakeholders, by enabling them to prioritise their challenges, identify the associated innovation needs and opportunities and thus direct them towards innovations they really need. Finally, DAREnet will facilitate the uptake of innovative practices and solutions.
DAREnet aims at triggering a shift form the usual market-push to a “practitioner-pull” in the innovation of flood response and prevention. With its RDI Roadmap, DAREnet will convey a clear message about practitioner needs to the security industry and also strengthen the coherence of the demand from the different countries in region. It aims also at inducing new collaborations between practitioners, research and industry, creating innovative products opening new market perspectives beyond the Danube region. This will also greatly benefit European industry, and especially innovative SME in the region, to which DAREnet will offer a unique opportunity to knit strategic innovation alliances with later end-users.
Furthermore, DAREnet will enable an EU joint network concept for disaster resilience that will create new connections between civil protection organisations in the region and the EUCPM, complementing established cooperation through response assistance modules.

Website & more info

More info: http://darenetproject.eu.