• The president of the Miño-Sil River Basin Authority, José Antonio Quiroga, chaired this Thursday the launching day of the RISC-Plus project at the Marcos Valcárcel Cultural Centre in Ourense.
• The project, supported by the Interreg VI-A Spain-Portugal Programme (POCTEP) 2021-2027, represents “a fundamental step” to implement the advances promoted by the basin organisation through other projects.

The aim is to establish measures that will help to mitigate the consequences of climate change on rivers, in this sense it seeks to improve the hydrological knowledge of the international demarcation and improve the systems to help in decision-making in the face of flooding events and prolonged drought events, all with a budget of more than 1,600,000 euros and an execution period that will end in December 2025.

The intention is to continue the previous project, RISC-Miño-Limia, which represented an important advance in the knowledge of the basin, as Quiroga explained, recalling that, through this project, it was possible to carry out “an exhaustive analysis” of the basin through the revision of the hydrographic network, as well as obtaining a new digital terrain model of the Portuguese part.

In addition, it created a new early warning system for floods, through which the forecast of flows and the extent of the flood stain is obtained, “which makes it possible to anticipate extreme phenomena”.

The president of the CHMS highlighted the “cooperation, collaboration and coordination” between cross-border entities and also between universities, pointing out that it is a “transversal” project where “knowledge converges to try to tackle a common problem”.

 

SPECIFIC ACTIONS

In specific actions, the president of the Hydrographic Confederation highlighted the installation of 17 new monitoring stations to provide more data and serve as a basis for implementing resilience policies, “because we know that droughts and floods cannot be avoided, but also that through the study of knowledge we can present measures to curb the impact”.

In this sense, he stressed that the partners were satisfied with the coordination and cooperation, “which encourages us to continue working in unison towards a hydrological plan between territories with similar characteristics and common interests”, in which “prevention, protection and preparation in the face of extreme phenomena are key to avoiding damage to people and their property”.

In the presentation, Quiroga was accompanied by representatives of the project partners, Inés Andrade, director of the ARH-NORTE, Portuguese Environment Agency (APA), Javier Rodríguez Rajo, Vice-Rector of the Ourense Campus of the University of Vigo; and Tiago Ferradosa, from the Department of Civil Engineering of the University of Porto.