A case study: DEM 4, Vilnius

One of the DEMs of The HuT’s project has been working locally in Lithuania to improve the monitoring and forecasting of heavy rainfall and increase the awareness within the local communities.

In order to do so, our partners organised a seminar on climate change in Kretinga, a city in north Lithuania where the precipitation in November 2023 doubled in the last few months and where four flood waves occurred since November 2023.
Consequences of such climate extremes are not only destruction of properties, but also risk of drinking water contamination for residents not connected to municipal water system.

Our partners in Vilnius visited the urban flooding site. The visit was a good opportunity to find out barriers and enablers of natural disaster risk reduction (DRR) in local municipality as well as to support local municipality with scientific knowledge on climate change and future projections and adaptation. One of The HuT’s objectives is indeed to find “amplifying tools” that can be later transferred to other territories and adapted by various actors to be able to amplify their own impact.

After providing Kretinga municipality with facts and theories, the specific context was discussed and knowledge was adapted to the context. As a result from the visit and the seminar, some recommendations have been put together for the municipality.
This is an excellent example of how municipalities can be supported to improve their disaster risk reduction strategies.