VTEI / Current Issue

Current Issue

HYMOD-KZ database and deficit areas

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This article describes the HYMOD-KZ database, available at https://shiny.vuv.cz/HYMOD-KZ/. The database provides detailed results of hydrological modelling and hydrological balance analysis of catchments (water bodies) for current and future climate conditions; it also includes updated deficit areas, the description of which is part of this article. This tool can serve as a foundation for water management ex-perts, academia, and the broader professional community as it provides outputs at the spatial resolution of water bodies. The graphical rep-resentation of results facilitates understanding of complex hydrological phenomena and supports decision-making in water management planning.

The issue of antimicrobial resistance in the aquatic environment of the Czech Republic

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Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has emerged as a high priority global problem in recent decades. Its severity lies in the critically increasing number of pathogenic bacteria that carry resistance genes to previously common antibiotics, making them a health threat. The emergence of resistance is a consequence of the long-term misuse of antibiotics in human medicine and veterinary praxis (with the most significant contribution from developing countries). In 2017, the UN warned that the issue is not limited to these areas and that the environment can also be a significant reservoir and vector for the spread of AMR. The issue has been included in the „One Health“ initiative, which is based on a collaborative approach to combat AMR across the health, agriculture and environment sectors. AMR enters the aquatic environment in the form of resistant bacterial strains (ARB) or resistance genes (ARG) shed by patients through municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), runoff or agricultural wastes.

Tools for risk assessment of catchment areas for abstraction points of water intended for human consumption

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In December 2020, the new EU Directive 2020/2184 on the quality of water intended for human consumption was published. This Directive places a strong emphasis on comprehensive protection of water resources and introduces an obligation to carry out risk assessment and risk management of the catchment areas for abstraction points of water intended for human consumption, compared to the previous Directive from 1998. The risk analysis of the catchment areas must be carried out for all water abstractions for drinking purposes that abstract more than 10 m3 raw water per day. In the Czech Republic, this concerns approximately 3,650 abstractions (of which about 3,500 are groundwater abstractions and about 150 surface water abstractions). On a nationwide scale, it is therefore a considerable amount of risk analyses of parts of the catchment areas, which, according to the Directive, must be performed by 2027. The main aim of the project “Tools for risk assess-ment of catchment areas for abstraction points of water intended for human consumption” (supported by the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic) is to develop a methodology for the preparation of this risk analysis of the catchment areas. In order to ensure that the risk analyses of the catchment areas to be prepared by different entities have a uniform form and structure, a form (mock-up) of what the risk analyses of the catchment areas should look like and what they should contain has been developed within the framework of the methodology. As this is a very complex issue, only the main skeleton of the methodology will be presented in this article, focusing on the basic characteristics of the abstraction and the definition of the area (the catchment areas) in which the risk activities for the quality of the abstracted raw water are determined.

Future water demand scenarios to 2050: sectoral analyses and forecasts

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This article presents the results of the sub-objective “Scenarios of future water demands for different climate scenarios and individual sec-tors of water use” (DC 1.1). Which is part of TA CR project No. SS02030027 “Water systems and water management in the Czech Republic and climate change conditions (Water Centre)” and is a sub-part of the WP 1 “Prediction of the development of water resources security in the Czech Republic until 2050 in regions depending on climate change”.

Interview with Ing. Vladimír Novák, Director General of the Directorate of Water Policy of the Ministry of Environment of the Slovak Republic

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This year, the Slovak Republic is chairing the largest commission focused on the protection of watercourses, the International Commis-sion for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR). Therefore, we interviewed its president for the Year 2024, Ing. Vladimír Novák, who is also the General Director of the Directorate of Water Policy at the Slovak Ministry of Environment.

17th conference Radionuclides and ionizing radiation in water management

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The annual conference Radionuclides and ionizing radiation in water management took place on 21st and 22nd May 2024 at the Clarion Hotel in České Budějovice. The expert guarantor was Ing. Barbora Sedlářová (TGM WRI) and the organizational guarantor was Jan Kříž (ČVTVHS, z. s.). The conference was attended by 63 experts, of which 58 from the Czech Republic and 5 from Slovak Republic.