Global Summit on Earth Science and Climate Change November 26-27, 2019 Lisbon, Portugal

Tihomir Frangen has completed his PhD at the Zagreb University in 2013. He is employed in the Croatian Geological Survey as a Hydrogeologist, dealing mostly with Karst, but also has interests in Engineering Geology, GIS and Remote Sensing. He has published more than 20 papers.

European Environment Agency (EEA) reported Europe suffered over 213 major damaging floods between 1998 and 2009, which have caused 1,126 deaths, displacement of about half a million people and at least €52 billion in insured economic losses (Source: EEA). Consequently, the EU Flood Directive has been in force since November 2007. Which main purpose is to establish a framework for flood risk assessment and management to reduce the negative consequences of floods on human health, economic activity, cultural heritage and the environment? Time for action on climate change came, so GDi d.o.o. and Croatian Geological Survey, as a partner, are working on the project implementation – Development of an IT platform for Flood Prevention and Mitigation of Harmful Environmental Impact - GDi Ensemble FloodSmart (October 2017–March 2020). Resulting with GDi Ensemble FloodSmart, a complete real-time Flood Risk Management and real-time Flood Protection System based on Esri ArcGIS platform. A single web portal consolidates all relevant decision-making information for organizations responsible for the implementation of flood protection and rescue systems. It enables integration of flood hazards and flood prevention activates, ahead of, and after flood events. The portal also allows clear, precise and easily understood information to be presented to both executives and public.

Zofia Rzepecka has completed her PhD from the Agricultural and Technical Academy in Olsztyn, Poland. Her Postdoctoral studies were conducted at the University of Warmia and Mazury. She is a Full Professor in the field of Geodesy. She is interested in GNSS and GRACE Applications. She has published more 100 papers in worldwide journals.

In the era of global climate change, monitoring of water resources, including groundwater, is of fundamental importance for nature, agriculture, economy and society. The purpose of this presentation is to check compliance of changes in groundwater level obtained from direct measurements in wells with groundwater storage (GWS) anomalies calculated using GRACE observations in Poland. Data from the Global Land Data Assimilation (GLDAS, in the form of soil moisture (SM) and snow water equivalence (SWE), were used to convert GRACE observations into series of GWS changes. It turned out that very high consistency occurs between GRACE observations and changes in water level in wells, while the GWS series obtained from GRACE and GLDAS do not provide adequate compatibility. Further research presented in the presentation was devoted to attempts to explain this phenomenon. In addition, time series of GRACE, GLDAS and GWS observations were analysed for changes occurring in them.