Together with the University of Bonn (Department of Geography) and the German Federal Institute of Hydrology (BfG), CHR organised a successful workshop on the hydrological memory of the Rhine in Bonn at the beginning of November (9-10) under the title: "Historical flood and droughts of the Rhine and its tributaries: Inventory and application".
During this workshop, several experts from universities, governments and knowledge institutes discussed historical high and low water marks and events of the pre-instrumental period. These marks and events are an essential extension of information regarding particularly rare, but also especially extreme and damaging events and are therefore invaluable for risk management.
The various presentations were followed by discussions on possible follow-up, which revealed various ideas, suggestions and priorities for a further international project. In the near future, we will work on these ideas together with the partners and keep you informed of developments.
The following topics and presentations were given during the workshop (English presentations):
Session A: inventory of historical floods
- Historical floods in the Netherlands (University Utrecht, Geography)
- Historical floods and droughts of River Rhine in Germany (University Bonn, Geography)
- Historical floods in Rhineland-Palatinate (State Office for the Environment Rhineland-Palatinate, Hydrology)
- Historical floods in Switzerland (University Bern, History)
Session B: Background and Application
- Dealing with the variety of historical sources for flood and low water reconstruction (University Bern, History)
- Possibilities of reconstructing the channel bed morphology and floodplain topography in historical times. (German Federal Institute of Hydrology, Env. Sciences)
- Modelling and Simulation of historical floods (University Twente, Mathematics)
- Primitive discharge estimation – benefits of simple approaches (University Bonn, Geography)
Session C: Dealing with historical flood and drought data
- Database concepts – the national database for historical floods in Czech Republic as example (Czech Hydrometeorological Institute, Hydrology)
- Integration of historical floods and droughts in statistics (German Federal Institute of Hydrology, Hydrology)