Strategic Development Plan for Croatian Meteorological and Hydrological Services

Requirements to enhance the quality and efficiency of services are due to the fast evolving needs of Croatian society, and the growing demands placed by international co-operation and competition. Liberalisation of services will take place as Croatia moves towards joining the EU.

Former state organisations face increasing pressure to re-orient themselves to new conditions characterised by market survival and customer acceptance. The Strategic Development Plan contains visions and strategic action plans with intermediate milestones. With the help of the plan DHMZ is in a better position to transform its activities to fit new liberalised market conditions.

Prior research shows that hydrological and meteorological services are very beneficial for many sectors of society. The significance of the services will grow because of more volatile and exceptional weather conditions, largely due to climate change. Advanced services improve the preparedness for exceptional weather conditions and thus reduce damage and improve safety.

“In this strategic development plan we combined Finnish meteorological expertise and VTT's versatile competence in service systems; our know-how in transport, energy and infrastructure systems are particularly strong. We also really enjoyed the co-operation with the Croatian experts who naturally know their country's circumstances; it proved to be mutually rewarding and brought interdisciplinary benefit to the plan,” says Senior Researcher Raine Hautala from VTT.

This project was financed by Finnfund (Finnish Fund for Industrial Cooperation Ltd.) and VTT. The project was part of a larger research effort exploring the prerequisites for enhanced information services and evaluation of service concepts EVASERVE http://www.evaserve.fi/ . EVASERVE is coordinated and managed by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.