• Project that will give continuity to the successful results achieved during the RISC_ML “Flood and Drought Risk Prevention in the International Miño-Limia River Basin”, developed between 2017 and 2021.
• The objective is to further improve resilience to the risks of floods and droughts arising from the impact of climate change in the international basins of the Miño and Limia rivers.

The Hydrographic Confederation of Miño-Sil (CHMS), an autonomous body under the MITECO, has submitted a new application to the cross-border cooperation programme INTERREG VI-A POCTEP 2021-2027 with the RISC_PLUS project, which seeks greater resilience to the risks of floods and droughts arising from the impact of climate change in the international basins of the Miño and Limia rivers, through new advances in prevention, preparedness and digitisation.

This new project would be a continuation of the RISC_ML project (“Prevention of Flood and Drought Risks in the International Miño-Limia River Basin”), developed between 2017 and 2021. The achievement of the objectives set, which are listed below, has therefore driven this candidacy:

• Improvement of the hydrological knowledge of the international demarcation, both present and future, with special emphasis on the impact of climate change on water resources and on extreme phenomena, their duration and intensity.
• Improving decision-support systems for protracted drought events through the development of drought risk assessment protocols and decision-making tools.
• Improved decision-making capacity in the face of flood events, by predicting expected flows through hydrological and hydraulic modelling.
• To increase knowledge of the socio-economic impact of climate change and associated drought and flood events in order to propose adaptation and mitigation measures and analyse their economic costs.

New project

The RISC_PLUS project is planned to last 3 years, led, as in the previous RISC_ML project, by the Miño-Sil River Basin Authority, with the Agência Portuguesa do Ambiente – APA ARH Norte-, the competent body in the Portuguese part of the international water demarcation, as partners, and with the universities of Oporto (Facultade de Engenharia – FEUP) and Vigo (through the Water Campus), as reference centres in Galicia and the North of Portugal, which will provide the necessary knowledge for the implementation of actions that require a higher level of specificity.

As regards improvements, it is worth highlighting, on the one hand, the inclusion in the system of 17 new stations (10 in Spain and 7 in Portugal), which will have an impact on obtaining greater knowledge of the basin, and on the other hand, digitalisation, through the use of the latest technologies to facilitate both the analysis of the different variables and decision-making and actions in the face of climate uncertainty, contributing to planning for the adaptation to climate change.

Finally, and as a more novel aspect, a socio-economic analysis of the effect that the projected changes may have on the population and certain economic sectors that are more exposed to the consequences of climate change in the Miño and Limia-Lima river basins will be carried out, measuring the cost of taking mitigation/adaptation measures compared to inactivity.

The RISC_PLUS project seeks, in short, to continue moving towards a single hydrological plan for the international demarcation, in accordance with Article 13.2 of the Water Framework Directive.