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Under the theme “Prevention and adaptation”, the Spanish National Flood Congress was held in the city of Orihuela between September 10th and 11th.
The City Council of Orihuela, the Alicante Provincial Government and the University of Alicante (UA), in collaboration with the UA Institute of Water and Environmental Sciences, were the organizing bodies of the Spanish National Flood Congress on September 10th and 11th held in the city of Orihuela.
The Congress date and location are not by chance. It took place a year after the cold front episode that severely punished the southeast of the Spanish peninsula. And it was celebrated in the capital of the Vega Baja region, the most affected area along with the Region of Murcia.
The National Flood Congress, under the theme “Prevention and adaptation”, was divided into three thematic chapters ordered as follows:
- Chapter I: Hydrometeorological phenomena and territorial planning.
- Chapter II: Mitigation measures and infrastructures.
- Chapter III: Socio-economic, environmental and legal evaluation.
As part of Chapter II, Ignacio Escuder (Founding Partner of iPresas) gave a lecture that dealt with, paraphrasing the title, “The risk and disaster management policies of different multilateral organizations and their impact on the development of flood protection infrastructures”.
The presentation started with a brief introduction on the types of risks we face, the consequences that have occurred worldwide recently, and explaining the memorandum of understanding between the USA and Spain Governments on risk and dam safety management.
Subsequently, the risk management policy of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the methodology developed to include the vision of risk analysis in infrastructure projects were reviewed. To illustrate this methodology, a real case study in the city of Tegucigalpa (Honduras) carried out by iPresas in collaboration with the IDB was presented.
Finally, two of the latest research works on dam safety management carried out by the iPresas team in collaboration with other members of the scientific community were summarized. These latest contributions highlight iPresas’s burning desire to advance knowledge in this field.