In western Slovakia there are two major rivers, Danube and Morava, which are prone to flood on a yearly basis. The Bratislava region is exposed to flooding from both of these rivers. First of its kind and scale, the FLOODSERV project enabled the Bratislava region to join a forum of international domain-experts and contribute to development of innovation and value in flood-risk management.

Exdwarf consulting s.r.o., a Slovakia-based-SME founded in 2012, led the Slovak pilot of the Floodserv project in close cooperation with BSK (Bratislava Self-Governing Region). In addition to supporting the pilot via dissemination, evaluation and validation activities, they also developed business intelligence system components. Exdwarf has been supporting piloting the FP7 project FUPOL in the Slovak municipality of Senec since 2015.

BSK is the largest self-governing region in Slovakia. BSK suffers from yearly flooding of the Danube and participates in the project by, with a focus on open government and enhancing involvement of the citizen, piloting FLOODSERV in collaboration with the other Slovak project partner, Exdwarf.

You can find more information about the Slovakia Piloting activities here.

The pilot actions in the Genoa Municipality aimed to facilitate and certify building paths of local community networks able to interact with territories, to raise awareness and major responsibility on self-help projects in critical situation.

The actions addressed the efforts to:

• gather collective knowledge in the urbanized territory,
• get sites analytical and planning maps,
• include self-defense actions facing risk conditions.

The goal is to strengthen citizens involvement and leverage the collaborative power of ICT networks (networks of people, knowledge and sensors) during day by day routine to learn how to deal together regarding different situations.

The Genoa pilot project is based on the use of new technologies and tools that will include new software applications and services for smartphone, capitalizing existing networks and instruments to build focus groups as a network of people belonging to a neighborhood affected, negatively or positively, by a recurring event. The power of IoP and IoT with Ios will be enhanced through the interchange of opinions / information establishing a new concept of dialogue with the civic administration, co-participated on the basic concepts of cities, urban planning, environment.

You can find more information about the Genoa Piloting activities here.

In an increasingly urbanized society, natural hazards become more and more important, severe weather and hydrological phenomena resulting from so-called climate change are becoming more frequent and extreme, causing enormous environmental, human and economic consequences. The municipality of Vila Nova de Famalicão, located in the Northern Region of Portugal suffers similarly to many Portuguese and European regions with the risk of floods.

Located in the river basin of Rio Ave and with a vast network of water lines, the Municipality of Vila Nova de Famalicão has suffered recurrent with the phenomenon of floods especially in Rio Ave and East River that has caused floods that can endanger residential areas, Industrial units and farms. Participation in the FLOOD-serv project thus preseneds an excellent opportunity to create a tool that contributes to a more effective and efficient occurrence management by civil protection agents. But it is also an opportunity for greater collective awareness of the problem of risks, a contribution to better land management, as well as a new policy of proximity between public authorities and citizens. The aim was to create a platform that allows the local community to play an active role in the prevention and design of mitigation actions, harnessing the power of new communication technologies in order to reduce the impacts of natural hazards and their interactions with activities human beings.

You can find more information about the Portugal Piloting activities here.

The metropolitan area of Bilbao holds a population of over 1 million inhabitants and is located along an estuary about 14 Km long. Bilbao is vulnerable to flooding, which is the location’s main natural hazard, since storms with sudden heavy rainfall are quite frequent and being hemmed in by hills all over, water rushes down into the river in short time.

The phenomenon of flooding occurs in Bilbao cyclically. Since 1380, 39 are reported quite in detail. A remarkable event was the flood in 1983 that caused a serious damage to people and property. Affection was accounted in 39 casualties an over 1.2 billion euros in damages on assets.

Since then a lot of work has been carried out in order to prevent and diminish the effects of new flooding which will occur for sure. The main objective of the City of Bilbao running one of the pilots of the FLOOD-serv project is to succeed in allowing all citizens of Bilbao to become active agents in the reduction of flooding impacts, using social media and improving the technical platforms of the municipality with the new technologies and solutions provided by the technical partners of the project.

Moreover, Bilbao aimed to collect experiences from the other cities and regions participating in the project and, in that way, also improve emergency management procedures.

You can find more information about the Spain Piloting activities here.

The pilot region is the Danube Delta, known for its flora and fauna, especially birds, and for its variety of ecosystems, located in Eastern Europe, at the Black Sea shore, is the largest wetland in Europe, protected under three international conventions. During the 20th century, the Danube Delta has suffered from human interventions that have led to dramatic changes in some areas, and which have resulted in dramatic alterations or disturbances of the water balance.

The high torrentially degree of watercourses, due to the climate conditions, physical and geographical factors lead to a frequent phenomenon of flooding on the Romanian territory. From the total catchments area of the Danube hydrographic basin, 29 % pertains to Romanian territory, being drained by 97.4 % by this river.

Flash-floods, river and urban floods are specific to the Danube Delta pilot that can be generated by heavy rains and by dam ruptures. The FLOOD-serv target area of the pilot includes Tulcea municipality, Isaccea town, Bestepe commune, and Mahmudia commune.

You can find more information about the Danube Delta Piloting activities here.