Responding to Early Flood Warnings in the European Union

The first warning of the severe flooding that would afflict Romania, Moldova and the Ukraine in the summer of 2008 was issued by the European Flood Alert System (EFAS) on 20 July 2008.1 With soil moisture levels already high from an unusually wet summer and heavy rainfall forecast for the week ahead, this experimental, pan-European early-warning system was predicting a significant probability of river flows exceeding the ‘severe’, or very highest, EFAS alert level on all the major river basins in Romania from 25 July onwards. Seeing a strong flooding signal persist over consecutive forecast simulations, the scientific team working on the pre-operational development of EFAS at the European Commission’s (EC) Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Ispra, Italy felt confident enough to issue a formal alert to the Romanian National Institute of Hydrology and Water Management (INHGA). INHGA is the national body with operational responsibility for flood forecasting and warning in Romania, and in 2006 it signed a formal Memorandum of Understanding so as to receive medium-term (3–10 days) EFAS alerts to complement the weather forecasts, real-time river monitoring systems and short-term (0-48 hours), largely statistical, flood-forecast models it uses to provide flood forecasts to the General Inspectorate for Emergency Situations in the Interior Ministry and the national water authority, Apele Romane, who in turn is responsible for issuing catchment-scale forecasts and warnings to local civil protection authorities (CPAs) and the public at large in Romania.