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Joining Forces in Flood Protection
There are no borders for water. Again during summer 2010, the necessity of transnational efforts in preventing and handling floodings became evident. South Moravia actively engages in cooperation projects that concentrate on cross-border management of CENTROPE waterways.
Protection against Floods
The South Moravian Region has been repeatedly affected by severe floods. A study on flood protection measures concluded that it is no longer necessary to build large waterworks to capture and manipulate water on the major streams in the region - Morava, Thaya, Svratka and Svitava. Fundamental measures of flood protection were identified to be water retention in the landscape by the implementation of erosion control measures, determination of areas for water spilling in the landscape and completion of dikes to protect urban communities, local solutions to protect against torrential rains, support for construction of polders as well as improvement of information transfer. All of these measures have also been reflected in the Thaya and Morava River Basin District Plans and these are gradually implemented and processed within other projects.
Successful Cooperation on the Way
Cross-border or international cooperation in flood prevention is not only desirable, it is rather necessary. Different actors in the South Moravian Region are preparing or have already implemented various projects co-funded by the European Territorial Cooperation Objective.
The bilateral Czech-Austrian project Dyje-Thaya was implemented in 2006-2008 and dealt with the evaluation of the ecological condition of water bodies in the region of border river Thaya. A special emphasis was put on bilateral processing and harmonization of data with a view to identify proposals for improvement of the ecological state of the joint Czech-Austrian Thaya river basin. The project received a grant from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) under the INTERREG IIIA Program.
The Dyje-Thaya Project can be seen as the first step in successful bilateral cooperation implementing the EU Framework Directive on Water Policy in the Czech Republic and Austria. An important benefit of the whole project was the establishment of mutual communication structures between Austrian and Czech partners. Information transfer on methodological procedures in both countries eventually led to the decision on the South Moravian Region’s involvement in another international project CEFRAME (Central European Flood Risk Assessment and Management in CENTROPE). This Czech-Austrian-Slovak-Hungarian joint project has been launched this year and will include flood risk assessment and elaboration of risk maps.
Another example of successful cross-border cooperation in the extended basin of the Danube River is the Czech-Austrian bilateral project Morava-Thaya intended to improve the quality of flood forecasting system on both rivers. The project expects to supplement the existing automated monitoring at nine sites along the border parts of the Morava - Thaya rivers with an extension of the rainfall-runoff model to the entire length of the Morava, up to the junction with the Danube.
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