Berat

The selected case study is located in Albania, specifically in the city of Berat, the capital of the surrounding Berat County, as the principal beneficiary of the project. Prefecture of Berat is one of the most important UNESCO heritage sites protected in Albania, but also in high risk of floods due to the geomorphological construction of the terrain and also the dangerousness of OSUMI river basin.

For this purpose the project intends to implement the flood monitoring network of the Berat Prefecture as a case study for the project. A preliminary study will be carried out to evaluate the best configuration of the network in order to have an observational coverage adequate to the needs both in terms of hydrometric sections and the terms of pluviometric coverage. The activities developed during the WP2 will be implementing and tested at prefectural level, but also all the data produce will be integrated at Civil protection national level through myDEWETRA Platform.

The Berat Prefecture will also be supported in the identification of critical thresholds in relation to: the response time of the hydrological basins; the response capacity of the civil protection system.

 Support will also be provided to the prefecture of Berat for the identification of operational procedures for the use of the collected data to be included in the prefecture emergency plan.

The Seman is a river in western Albania. It is formed at the confluence of the rivers Osum and Devoll, a few km northwest of Kuçovë. It is 85 km long (281 km including its longest source river Devoll) and its drainage basin is 6203 km2 . Its average discharge is 95.7 m3/s.  It flows west through Fier-Shegan and Mbrostar (near Fier) and the delta in in the Adriatic Sea near Topojë. The flood risk areas in the prefecture of Berat is caused mainly from: the Osumi River and Devoll river, but need to mentioned that also some of the streams as the Malindi streams, Guhaku, Bogova, Black Water, Kapinova, Karkanjozi, Vodica, Gjoroven, Lapardhice, all of them part of Semani river basin figure.

Figure 4. Seman river basin, represented in map with light purple colour.

The risk assessment of UNDP on the 2003, analyze that the consequences of floods according to 100 year flood event are very problematic for the major part of the municipalities of the prefecture, specially for the Berati municipality. Form this type of event can flooded 10 villages, 4 municipalities, 966 buildings, as well as 74,040111 ha agricultural area, this with serious consequences for 4,942 inhabitants. The flood events are represented in the map in the following.

Figure 5. Flood maps caused by Semani and Vjosa river basin in the south part of the country, designed by UNDP 2003.

Deepening of the Seman River bed (Osum and Devoll), erosion of the banks. In order to analyze the state of the rivers in the country need to determine the scale the impact of geological phenomena and human intervention on their beds.

During the assessment the Seman River Basin was monitored at five monitoring points / profiles for the period 2008-2016. These profiles are distributed in the Osumi River (two points) and in the Semani River (three points). There are no monitored profiles in the Devoll River. However, the plain area before the joining represents from Osumi and Devoll Rivers has similarly hydro-morphological, the results of the Osumi River at the two Ura-Vajgurore monitoring points in Osumi and the Kuci Bridge at Seman in some ways are also indicative of the state of the Devoll River. Among the main issues highlighted by this monitoring is the presence of erosion in different segments of the river, in different shapes and intensities. At all points there has been significant bottom erosion, which results in lower bed river. Most pronounced was observed in Ure Vajgurore in the years 2008-2015 (43.2 cm decrease), followed by the Irnsht River segment (34.8cm), Ura e Mbrostarit (19.4cm) and the Ura e Kucit wit13cm.

Figure 6. the flood hazard map related the Berati city centre, design by Prefecture of Berati.

The most important is that the flood frequency is increase frequently in the last 30 years, the return period is decrease to 3 or 6 years, and systematic damages coused by this type of floods are more or less: Flood and water presence 100 -120 houses, 40-45 businesses, 2 kindergartens , the city park, the fire station, library, 2 schools and 5 state institutions.

According to the frequency of floods and he damages caused by them, the prefecture of Berati , civil protection department has individualize the hot spot areas for all the territory of the prefecture, as are showed in flowing maps.

Figure 7. Flood risk areas in the Prefecture of Berati
Figure 8. Flood risk areas of the Osumi river basin, City of Bera
Figure 9. Flood risk areas of the joint river basin, Ura Vajgurore
Figure 10. Flood risk agricultural areas of Kutalli

For more information on this case study, read the document.