Danube Floodplain Online Course

Floodplains have historically been vibrant ecosystems, but development and climate change have increased flood risk. This Danube Floodplain course demonstrates the benefits of restoring natural river flooding for water management and biodiversity.

About this course

Floodplains were through the history the lively part of landscapes, where different land management was synced with the repeating flooding. With the intensification of land use, the floodplains diminished, were drained, settled or even heavily polluting factories were built on them, supported by infrastructure to prevent overflooding.

The risk of flooding became hazard to loss of property and lives. Both are increasing under the climate change. According to the recent management and scientific evidence, bringing river to its natural path of flooding is the best possible solution to tackle multiple water, drought, biodiversity and land management related challenges of our time. Danube Floodplain project shows this is possible.

This online course looks at the cross-cutting water management tools developed for the Danube region, and applicable across its boundaries. Topics include the historical floodplain loss, flood risk, and on application case studies we discuss the win-win measures.

Course details

Learning mode
Type
Short course
Duration
6 weeks
Time investment
2-5 hours per week
Starting date
Recurring
Registration date
Open for enrolment

What you’ll learn

The Danube Floodplain Online Course is the first course offered on edX by an EU Interreg project. In our case, we have the following goals:

  • to explain the whole concept of Floodplain management;
  • to show practical examples of implementation of floodplain restoration measures;
  • to support sustainability of the tools and knowledge created in the Danube Floodplain project.

Course partners

Course outline

Structure

The content remains accessible for the duration of the course. Course consists of introductory module and six content modules. Those are:

(1) Flood Risk Management

(2) Floodplain Management and lessons learned

(3) Technical aspects of floodplain restoration studies

(4) Supporting decisions in floodplain management

(5) Decision support tools

(6) Conclusions

Requirements

Learners can start and complete the course materials at any time. The course will be linked with the Danube Floodplain Winter Online School (planned for 1st half of November). The participants of the Online Course are invited to enroll and deepen their knowledge under the supervision of lecturers.

With this course, we want to address young and mid-level professionals from local, regional or national water authorities and disaster risk reduction area, the SMEs working in flood, water management sector, and students –the future managers. Invited are all, who are willing to develop competences in floodplain management.