Milan Kalas

• PhD in Hydrology
• Consultant at KAJO

Ongoing climate change is increasing summertime temperatures, and frequency and intensity of heatwaves in Europe, which can threaten human health. Relatively little is known about how quickly outdoor heat penetrates into residences during heatwaves. Long-term and systematic networks recording indoor temperatures are challenging to install and maint...

Climate change and environmental degradation present significant threats globally. The various sources report on different climate records. The European Green Deal aims to counteract these challenges by achieving zero emissions by 2050, with a significant focus on citizen involvement. Citizen science initiatives play a critical role in engaging the...

I can’t change the world by myself. This is a common thought citizens share when it comes to climate action. Climate change campaigns usually aim at raising awareness and triggering action to reduce our footprint. However, these campaigns often fail as they are designed in a top-down manner. The ChallengeYeti app was created on a psychological-tech...

What's the worst that could happen? After a flood has devastated communities, those affected, the news media, and the authorities often say that what happened was beyond our imagination. Imagination encompasses the picturing of a situation in our minds linked with the emotions that we connect to this situation. However, the role imagination actuall...

Featured Application Results provide essential information for the initial design and adaptation potential of Nature-Based Solutions. It may serve as guidance to practitioners and data providers. Abstract Flooding events, like in Germany in 2021, highlight the need for re-naturalising banks of rivers and streams to naturally mitigate future floodi...

Global efforts are focusing on long-term preparedness for disasters highlighting the need for taking well-informed decisions in advance to avoid panic behaviour when a disaster strikes. Taking well-informed decisions includes the evaluation of the potential outcomes of a decision or action to avoid regretting them afterwards. Yet, little is known a...

What’s the worst that could happen? After a flood has devasted communities, those people affected, the news media, and the authorities often say that what happened was beyond our imagination. Imagination encompasses the picturing of a situation in our mind linked with the emotions that we connect with this situation. However, the role imagination a...

This chapter focuses on the challenges and solutions identified in ANYWHERE for a better use of crowd-generated content in climate emergency situational awareness and early warning systems. In this regard, it briefly introduces the concept of citizen science and its application in disaster risk management (DRM). The chapter presents the integration...

Citizen priorities, needs, and rights have been moving to the centre of ‘good’ risk management and governance in theory, but what is their role in practice? The disastrous impacts of the flooding event across western Europe in 2021 highlighted many gaps and challenges in flood risk governance (FRG) structures in Germany. To better understand these,...

The international community, particularly across the European Union (EU), is increasingly recognizing and promoting Nature-based Solutions (NBS) as long-term and sustainable measures against hydro-meteorological hazards such as flooding, coastal erosion, heat waves and landslides. Yet, scaled implementation of NBS at EU and global level presently r...

The knowledge derived from successful case studies can act as a driver for the implementation and upscaling of nature-based solutions (NBS). This work reviewed 547 case studies to gain an overview of NBS practices and their role in reducing the adverse impact of natural hazards and climate change. The majority (60 %) of case studies are situated in...

Social media is increasingly scraped to extract information on various topics. Within EU-funded projects, text mining is being applied to gain insights into public perceptions on climate change, citizen science activities, and on the relationship between climate, health, and ecosystems. For this purpose, natural language processing tools were used...

The flooding event in Germany in 2021 caused fatal and devastating consequences for the citizens, economy, infrastructure, and more. Research has been focusing on analyzing the meteorological and hydrological aspects of the flooding, the early warning system and warning dissemination, and the flood impact. However, research is lacking a deeper unde...

Presentation about PoliRural project result which is Semex - Semantic Explorer. Horizon 2020 funded PoliRural project is a research and innovation project to advance rural policy development in the age of disruptive data and technologies in order to deliver trusted, scalable and transferable solutions for policy co-creation. www.polirural.eu

Nature-based Solutions function as an umbrella concept for ecosystem-based approaches that are an alternative to traditional engineering solutions for Disaster Risk Reduction. Their rising popularity is explained partly by their entailing additional benefits (so called co-benefits) for the environment, society, and economy. The few existing framewo...

Floods can arise from a variety of physical processes. Although numerous risk assessment approaches stress the importance of taking into account the possible combinations of flood types (i.e. compound floods), this awareness has so far not been reflected in the development of early warning systems: existing methods for forecasting flood hazards or...

Floods have devastating effects on lives and livelihoods around the world. Structural flood defense measures such as dikes and dams can help protect people. However, it is the emerging science and technologies for flood disaster management and preparedness, such as increasingly accurate flood early warning systems, high-resolution satellite monitor...

Floods can arise from a variety of physical processes. Although numerous risk assessment approaches stress the importance of taking into account the possible combinations of flood types (i.e. compound floods), this awareness has so far not been reflected in the development of early warning systems: Existing methods for forecasting flood hazards or...

Remotely sensed images have become an important source of information for actors involved in disaster management and satellite-based emergency mapping (SEM) is increasingly used to support the response phase in the first hours and days after a disaster occurs. The delivery timeliness of the crisis information is key to the success of SEM. In the Co...

Semantic Explorer is one of the outputs of the Polirural research project financed by the Horizon2020 Program of the EU. One of the objectives of the Polirural project is to bring solutions to policymakers to support European rural areas in responding to contemporary challenges. The tool has been developed to provide support to researchers and faci...

Chapter 7 provides an overview of data types, sources and techniques for the generation of data to monitor and assess the impacts of NBS. An understanding of different types of data, their sources and use is core to the development of robust monitoring and evaluation plans.

Nature-based solutions are increasingly implemented to tackle disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. Their rising popularity over grey solutions is partially explained by their number of additional benefits (so called co-benefits) for the socio-ecological system (SES). Frameworks are available to monitor and assess co-benefits, howe...

Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) refer to the sustainable management, protection and use of nature to preserve the ecosystem and prevent the loss of biodiversity. Given the multiple environmental, social, and economic benefits they provide to society, NBS have been increasingly promoted and implemented in cities, especially for air pollution mitigation...

The ambition of OPERANDUM is to provide science-based evidence for the usability of nature-based solutions (NBS) ranging from local to landscape scales, and to foster the market opportunities, upscaling and replication of NBS in Europe and other non-European territories. It is important to develop a set of co-designed, co-developed, deployed, and d...

This document presents the contributions discussed at the second institutional workshop on Artificial Intelligence (AI), organized by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission. This workshop was held on 05th July 2019 at the premises of the JRC in Ispra (Italy), with video-conference to all JRC's sites. The workshop aimed to gather...

Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) refer to the sustainable management, protection and use of nature to mitigate risks and to preserve ecosystems, demonstrating environmental, social and economic benefits. The goal of the OPERANDUM project is to provide a science-based assessment of the usability and effectiveness of NBS. The assessment is complex consid...

As part of H2020 OPERANDUM project, a multi-dimensional, open and user-friendly platform is being developed, named OPERANDUM Geospatial Information Knowledge Platform (GeoIKP), which enables stakeholders and end-users to improve their knowledge of nature-based solutions (NBS) as a long-term and sustainable measure for mitigation and reduction of fl...

During the past decades, risk assessment experienced increasing interest in social science but also natural science and other disciplines. At the same time, risk reduction and mitigation gained in interest from local to global level due to the shift from reactive to proactive management. Hazard and risk assessment have been approached on different...

Rural areas in Europe are at risk due to depopulation, failing generation renewal, and a multitude of influences ranging from market-based, regulatory, to societal and climate changes. As a result, current rural policy is no longer keeping pace with these changes. We propose an advanced rural policy development framework in order to deliver more ac...

Rural areas in Europe are at risk due to depopulation, failing generation renewal, and a multitude of influences ranging from market-based, regulatory, to societal and climate changes. As a result, current rural policy is no longer keeping pace with these changes. We propose an advanced rural policy development framework in order to deliver more ac...

This deliverable describes the role of text mining in the PoliRural project and the technical specifications of Semantic Explorer-the maintool for supporting pilots in the processes of needs gathering and policy assessment. The core semantic model will be built and "trained"on the corpus of EU texts, before being adapted to regional contexts and la...

This document presents the contributions presented at the first internal workshop on Artificial Intelligence (AI), organized by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission. This workshop was held on 23rd May at the premises of the JRC in Ispra (Italy), with video-conference to all JRC's sites. The workshop aimed to gather JRC special...

The purpose of this document is twofold. First, it presents the characterisation of extreme events occurred in the last 30 years (1989-2018) in the OPERANDUM OALs (in Europe and abroad): after a selection of cases, with criteria established according to hazard and site, the analysis is carried on by looking at their meteorological settings, availab...

This paper describes a prototype system that integrates social media analysis into the European Flood Awareness System (EFAS). This integration allows the collection of social media data to be automatically triggered by flood risk warnings determined by a hydro-meteorological model. Then, we adopt a multilingual approach to find flood-related messa...

This paper describes a prototype system that integrates social media analysis into the European Flood Awareness System (EFAS). This integration allows the collection of social media data to be automatically triggered by flood risk warnings determined by a hydro-meteorological model. Then, we adopt a multi-lingual approach to find flood-related mess...

European Commission, DG Joint Research Centre

This study proposes a role-playing experiment to explore the value of modern impact-based weather forecasts on the decision-making process to (i) issue warnings and manage the official emergency response under uncertainty and (ii) communicate and trigger protective action at different levels of the warning system across Europe. Here, flood or stron...

This study proposes a role-playing experiment to explore the value of modern impact-based weather forecasts on the decision-making process to (i) issue warnings and manage the official emergency response under uncertainty and (ii) communicate and trigger protective actions at different levels of the warning system across Europe. Here, flood or stro...

In the first hours of a disaster, up-to-date information about the area of interest is crucial for effective disaster management. However, due to the delay induced by collecting and analysing satellite imagery, disaster management systems like the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (EMS) are currently not able to provide information products u...

The development of methods for rapid flood mapping and risk assessment is a key step to increase the usefulness of flood early warning systems and is crucial for effective emergency response and flood impact mitigation. Currently, flood early warning systems rarely include real-time components to assess potential impacts generated by forecasted flo...

European wildfires are a seasonal natural hazard that many regions must battle regularly. However, as European urbanization continues to encroach on natural areas and the climate changes it is likely that the frequency of wildfires will increase likewise the number of areas prone to wildfires. It is therefore paramount not only to increase public a...

Within Europe, the most severe flood events are often cross-border and may need to be managed by several responsible authorities in different countries and administrative districts. In these situations, flood risk management becomes challenging as inconsistent or erroneous information may arise, for example, from lacking or incomplete communication...

Flooding is one of the major natural hazards that occur frequently, resulting in significant impacts both to human settlements and the environment. In addition to social and economic damage, floods can also have severe secondary consequences if they impact industrial installations storing, processing, or transporting hazardous substances. Flood wat...

The development of methods for rapid flood mapping and risk assessment is a key step to increase the usefulness of flood early warning systems, and is crucial for effective emergency response and flood impact mitigation. Currently, flood early warning systems rarely include real–time components to assess potential impacts generated by forecasted fl...

Social and mainstream media monitoring is being more and more recognized as valuable source of information in disaster management and response. The information on ongoing disasters could be detected in very short time and the social media can bring additional information to traditional data feeds (ground, remote observation schemes). Probably the b...

Social and mainstream media monitoring is being more and more recognized as valuable source of information in disaster management and response. The information on ongoing disasters could be detected in very short time and the social media can bring additional information to traditional data feeds (ground, remote observation schemes). Probably the b...

The availability of a real-time operational system for mapping flood hazard and assessing potential consequences might be extremely useful to help emergency response and management and to mitigate the impact of large flood events. This work describes the development of an experimental procedure for rapid flood risk assessment within the European Fl...

Social and mainstream media monitoring is being more and more recognized as valuable source of information in disaster management and response. The information on ongoing disasters could be detected in very short time and the social media can bring additional information to traditional data feeds (ground, remote observation schemes). The contributi...

Snow is an important component of the water cycle, and its estimation in hydrological models is of great significance concerning the simulation and forecasting of flood events due to snow-melt. The assimilation of Snow Cover Area (SCA) in physical distributed hydrological models is a possible source of improvement of snowmelt-related floods. In thi...

Using reliable observed data is important for performing real-time flood forecasts or hydrological simulation in order to calibrate parameters or to update model variables. Satellite snow products can be one of these data, since snow is a water reservoir with a high impact on the quality of discharge simulation. The satellite Snow Cover Area produc...

LISFLOOD is a distributed, semi-physical rainfall-runoff model designed for the simulation of hydrological processes in medium to large scale river basins. This model is used at the European Commission Joint Research Centre for studying floods, global hydrological changes and droughts. LISFLOOD is the basis of the European Flood Alert System (EFAS)...

Using reliable observed data is important for performing real-time flood forecasts or hydrological simulation. Observed data are necessary for calibrating or updating many variables of the models. Satellite snow data can be one of these data, since snow is a water reservoir with a high impact on the quality of discharge simulation. The satellite Sn...

The quality control, validation and verification of the European Flood Alert System (EFAS) are described. EFAS is designed as a flood early warning system at pan-European scale, to complement national systems and provide flood warnings more than 2 days before a flood. On average 20–30 alerts per year are sent out to the EFAS partner network which c...

LISFLOOD is a semi-physical rainfall-runoff model that allows the simulation of hydrological processes in medium to large scale river basins. This model is used at the European Commission Joint Research Centre for studying floods, hydrological global changes and droughts. LISFLOOD is the basis of the European Flood Alert System (EFAS), which is a p...

Snow is an important component of the water cycle and its estimation in hydrological models is of great importance concerning snow melting flood events simulations and forecasting. The LISFLOOD model is a spatially distributed hydrological model designed at the Joint Research Centre for large European river basins. It is used for a variety of appli...

The European Flood Alert System is under development at the European Commission Joint Research Centre since 2003 to foster international information exchange on early flood warning within Europe. The aim of EFAS is to provide catchment wide flood forecasts indicating the probability of upcoming events between 3-10 days in advance with emphasis on t...

LISFLOOD is a semi-physical rainfall-runoff model that allows the simulation of hydrological processes in medium to large scale European river basins. This model is used at the European Commission Joint Research Centre for studying floods, hydrological global changes and droughts. LISFLOOD is the basis of the European Flood Alert System (EFAS), whi...

Streamflow predictions most often show multiscale errors with unknown source and statistical structure that degrade forecast quality and limit the operational usefulness of the forecasts. According to the fact that the errors between observed and simulated series, occurs across many different time-scales and across different levels of resolution, t...

The hydrological community is looking increasingly at the use of ensemble prediction systems instead of single forecasts to increase flood warning times. International initiatives and research projects such as THORPEX, HEPEX, PREVIEW, or MAP-DPHASE foster successfully the interdisciplinary dialogue between the meteorological and hydrological commun...

This paper describes a case study that explores the limits of the predictability of floods, by combining forecasts with multiple spatial and temporal resolutions. Monthly, medium- and short range numerical weather prediction (NWP) data are input to the European Flood Alert System for a flood event that affected rivers in Romania in October 2007. Th...

The hydrological community is looking increasingly at the use of ensemble prediction systems instead of single (deterministic) forecasts to increase flood warning times. International initiatives and research projects such as THORPEX, HEPEX, PREVIEW, or MAP-DPHASE foster successfully the interdisciplinary dialogue between the meteorological and hyd...

The European Flood Alert System (EFAS) prototype has been running pre-operationally for all of Europe since 2005. EFAS is now providing 3–10 day probabilistic hydrological forecasts for 22 national hydrological services. Recently, the forecasts were also made accessible in real time to the EFAS partners via an interactive password-protected web-bas...

Within the EU Project PREVention, Information and Early Warning (PREVIEW), ensembles of discharge series have been generated for the Danube catchment by the use of various weather forecast products. Hydrological models applied for streamflow prediction often have simulation errors that degrade forecast quality and limit the operational usefulness o...

In catchments characterized by spatially varying hydrological processes and responses, the optimal parameter values or regions of attraction in parameter space may differ with location-specific characteristics and dominating processes. This paper evaluates the value of semi-distributed calibration parameters for large-scale streamflow simulation us...

In catchments characterized by spatially varying hydrological processes and responses, the optimal parameter values or regions of attraction in parameter space may differ with location-specific characteristics and dominating processes. This paper evaluates the value of semi-distributed calibration parameters for large-scale streamflow simulation us...

From 29th March to 09th April 2006, the Morava catchment in the Danube River basin was hit by severe flooding caused by snow melting and rainfall. The floods affected settlements and agricultural lands in Slovakia, Czech Republic and Austria. In the downstream Morava, 100-year flood and more peak discharges were observed. The European Flood Alert S...

From 29th March to 09th April 2006, the Morava catchment in the Danube River basin was hit by severe flooding caused by snow melting and rainfall. The floods affected settlements and agricultural lands in Slovakia, Czech Republic and Austria. In the downstream Morava, 100-year flood and more peak discharges were observed. The European Flood Alert S...

For the purpose of assessing flood hazard in the Upper Danube Basin in Central Europe under current and projected future climate conditions, we evaluated data from a recent experiment with the regional climate model HIRHAM at a horizontal resolution of approximately 12 km. The climate simulations were used to drive the hydrological model LISFLOOD a...

In the paper a methodology for estimating monthly potential evapotranspiration (E0) as an input for hydrological balance modelling in the upper Hron River basin was developed. Four different methods were used to calculate monthly potential evapotranspiration in 6 climate stations in the basin – the Tomlain method based on equations of energy balanc...

In the paper uncertainties in assessing the hydrological impacts of climate change for selected regions in Slovakia were analysed. A conceptual spatially-lumped hydrologi- cal rainfall-runoff model was chosen for modelling river runoff in a monthly time step. The model was calibrated using observed rainfall, temperature, air humidity, sun shine dur...

In the case of the absence of measured runoff optimization techniques cannot be used to estimate the parameters of rainfall-runoff models. In such a case usually empiri- cal regression methods were used for relating the model parameters to the catchment characteristics in a given region. In the paper a different method for the regional cali- bratio...

In the case of the absence of measured runoff optimisation techniques cannot be used to estimate the parameters of monthly rainfall-runoff models. In such a case usually empirical regression methods were used for relating the model parameters to the catchment characteristics in a given region. In the paper a different method for the regional calibr...

The aim of the EFAS activity is to develop a prototype of a European Flood Alert System providing early flood alerts across Europe (De Roo & Thielen, this issue). At present EFAS is set-up and running for the whole of Europe on a 5km grid. In order to evaluate the benefit of grid resolution and high-resolution data, for a number of test catchments...

The paper reviews recent climate change impact studies for the Slovak National Climate Program (SNKP). Basic adaptation strategies are also discussed. Priorities for future research within the SNKP are suggested.