Flood Forecasting and Warning System

The Flood Forecasting and Warning System of the Sava River basin – Sava FFWS strongly contributes to the strengthening of organizations responsible for hydrometeorological services and flood defense in the Sava countries. The Sava FFWS, as  a common forecasting platform, is an added value to existing national forecasting and warning systems that provides a better level of preparedness and optimized mitigation measures, thereby significantly contribute to reducing consequences of flooding.



The principal objective of the Sava FFWS is to support the stakeholders in taking balanced decisions in emergency situations of floods. The Sava FFWS enables the five riparian countries to take the right management decisions and carry out measures to prevent and mitigate severe flood events, based on accurate forecasts of flows and discharges with a sufficiently long lead time. This requires close cooperation with relevant stakeholders, managing the data and models on country level which is crucial for successful development of the system. The Sava FFWS is of key importance in this cooperation; it is essential to highlight that development of such a system would not have been possible without assistance, active support and outstanding cooperation of all the project beneficiaries in the region.

The Sava FFWS provides the forecasters of the hydrometeorological services an expert tool, enabling them to generate hydrological forecasts based on observed telemetry data from hydrological and meteorological gauges and Numerical Weather Predictions (NWP). The Sava FFWS uses hydrological and hydraulic models to compute the catchment runoff and river flows and water levels.

The Sava FFWS has proven to be a comprehensive system that includes all data and models contributed by the individual countries. This makes it a unique system when it comes to transboundary cooperation on flood forecasting. Nevertheless, there is always a potential for improvements.