The first international system for forecasting Danube floods and providing early flood warning was launched on 10^th March 2008 by the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR) and the Joint Research Centre (JRC). Following the disastrous 2002 floods in the Danube and Elbe river basins, the new system will provide the national authorities of countries in the Danube River Basin – the most international river basin in the world – with up to ten days to prepare for large floods. `Danube-EFAS´ is now part of the European Flood Alert System (EFAS), run by the JRC Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES) and used by 25 national authorities across Europe and covering over 85% of the continent’s major international river basins. In general terms, the benefit of EFAS is two-fold. First, it should provide the European Commission with useful information for the preparation and management of aid during a flood crisis. Second, national water authorities should benefit from additional medium-range flood information. This alert system is aimed at complementing national flood forecasting systems, not to replace them.

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