Results of the DFRIC announced during the 3rd Annual Forum

The winners of the first Danube Flood Resilience Innovation Competition (DFRIC) were announced during the 3rd Annual Practitioner Forum, which was held from 15-18 March in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

The DFRIC was aimed at identifying innovative approaches and ideas related to challenges in the field of “equipment and technologies” and its related subtopics. In this year’s competition a total of 14 submissions were received (8 projects & 6 project ideas). The entries were provided by academia (7), practitioners (6) and industry (1) stakeholders from eight countries of Danube region.

The following entities received the highest ratings of our independent jury in the category “Project”

  1. University of Kaiserslautern, Hydraulic Engineering and Water Management (Germany) “Students improving professional training in flood risk management”
  2. RWTH Aachen University, Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Water Resources Management (Germany) “Deep Learning-based Decision Support System”
  3. National Association of Volunteers in the Republic of Bulgaria (Bulgaria) “Cross-border cooperation in flood preparedness and response”

The following entities received the highest ratings of our independent jury in the category “Project idea”

  1. International Security and Emergency Management Institute (Slovakia) “MobileApp combining multiple approaches and options”                  
  2. Civil Protection Association In Győr-Moson-Sopron County and Hungarian Civil Protection Association (Hungary) “Development of an Integrated procedure for removal and opening of flow-retardant, flow-restricting, shut-off, alluvial and ice plugs, barriers based on rapid survey and analysis.”        
  3. Faculty of Security Studies, University of Belgrade (Serbia) “Establishing a Risk knowledge platform to support the early warning national systems in the Danube region”            

The DAREnet consortium congratulates all winners of the DFRIC and is looking forward to supporting these initiatives in jointly developing their innovative ideas further.

The second DFRIC will tackle issues related to “standards & procedures” and will be announced shortly. Stay tuned!