Brussels, 13/10/2003 (Agence Europe) - In the city of Dresden, which was badly hit last year by the flooding of the Elbe, Commissioner Philippe Busquin presented four research projects on flooding on 13 October, which were co-funded by the European Commission under the Community framework programme on research. The projects were as follows: - SPHERE, which looked at previous floods, to try to understand them and improve high-risk structures such as bridges and power plants; - EUROTAS, to improved river basin management; this project helped to mitigate the damage of last year's Elba flooding in the city of Prague; - EURAINSAT, to improve flood forecasting, by combining the data of several satellites; - MUSIC, to improve floods forecasting models.
Over the last decade, the European Union has contributes to the funding of 50 research projects into flooding, with a total budget of 58 million EUR.