Presentation of software application for flood prevention in the framework of the “Disaster Reduction, Standardized Hazard Analysis and Risk Evaluation” project of Serbia, Croatia and B&H

Within the “DR SHARE” project, co-financed by the EU, which gathers partners from three countries: Serbia, Croatia and B&H, the software application, IT tool, which will help in the management of the system of civil protection in emergency situations, was presented in Vukovar on 4 May 2017.

The presentation of the software application is the result of a joint and very intensive work on the EU funded project implementation that has lasted for several months, which aims to increase the common readiness for response and cooperation at the local, regional and cross-border level in the system of risk management.

The project aims at improving, after the floods in May 2014, the readiness of all three countries to respond to emergency situations, and the presented IT tool will significantly help and in the pilot phase, it will be applied in the project area, i.e. in the region of Srem of the AP Vojvodina in Serbia, Vukovar-Srijem County in Croatia and Posavina County in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The application of the IT tool, as assistance in the management of emergency situations, will allow a quick assessment of natural disasters, and an adequate assessment of available civil protection forces of the individual partner country by means of which the civil protection system should react to reduce the consequences of natural disasters to a minimum. The IT tool provides the option to record all parts of the civil protection system: individuals and legal entities, as well as material and technical resources of the system in different regions involved in the project.

The result of recording all parts of civil protection is the standardized procedures of the management of available forces, speeding up the operation of the entire system in crisis situations, as well as the possibility of defining the need for additional forces in circumstances when an emergency exceeds the available capacity in the area covered by natural disasters. This IT tool comes into foreground, because it defines standardized reports which are in cases of natural disasters exchanged in the cross-border area, so that one country could help another one respecting the protocols on bilateral level between the two partner countries.

This pilot project is funded by the European Union under the Civil Protection Mechanism, which encourages cross-border cooperation and the cooperation of civil protection system of individual states, so that they could harmonise to one another as much as possible, and in cases of natural disasters, which are increasingly threatening this area, could be ready to respond and more resistant to the effects of natural disasters.

The project value of DR SHARE (“Disaster Reduction, Standardized Hazard Analysis and Risk Evaluation”) project is EUR 281,222, out of which the EU co-financing is 75%, and the program is planned to last for 18 months. The project started on 1 January 2016 and is now entering the last two months, as envisaged for this project. The project partners on the Serbian side are the Provincial Secretariat for Regional Development, Interregional Cooperation and Local Self-Government and the European Affairs Fund of Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, on the Croatian side the Vukovar- Srijem County, Vukovar-Srijem County Development Agency HRAST Ltd and the National Protection and Rescue Directorate, while the partner in B&H is the Ministry for Agriculture, Water Management and Forestry of the Posavina County.