Hydrographic activity

Hydrographic activity is carried out by the professionals of our Directorate – on an almost 10,000 square km geographical location, which basically covers the area from River Drava to Lake Balaton and the region from River Danube to the estuary of River Mura – in accordance with the regulations of the Interior Ministry’s Decree No. 45/2014 (IX.23.). The aim of our hydrographic activity is the continuous monitoring of waters’ quantity found in nature, either it is surface water, phreatic water or confined groundwater; data collection and data processing are ensured due to measuring water levels and water discharges. Planning work and permitting procedures in water management are supported by the above mentioned data base. The independent hydrographic service, which has a history of more than 100 years, has existed in the framework of our Directorate since 1975; as its scope of activity is still progressively growing, it became one of the most important core tasks of our Directorate’s professional assignments.

Measurements, registrations and collection take place at stations of regional significance and at stations of local interest. Detection and measurement in most of the stations are already done by modern digital recording and data acquisition instruments.
Measured, registered and collected data of the stations are extracted with laptop and are uploaded effectively to the Hydrological Database of our Directorate (MAHAB). The monitoring is supervised by the colleagues of three hydrographic measuring groups in Pécs, Barcs and Kaposvár.

The following pie chart represents the distribution of different types of stations:



Hydrographic tasks include the support of flood control activities. It is the responsibility of hydrographic professionals to provide constant up-to-date and real-time hydrological information (situation assessment, warning, alert, alarm and forecast) for the heads of defence activities during periods of floods. Due to our Directorate’s telemetry network rapid flow of information can be achieved.
In this monitoring, all major rivers (River Danube, River Drava) and hilly streams such as Baranya Canal, Hábi Canal, Karasica Stream, Rinya Stream at Babócsa and Kapos Watercourse are covered. Floods are likely to occur on the areas of these watercourses. The monitoring stations are connected to the hydrographic centre of our Directorate with permanent GPRS-based internet connection, so the monitoring of water levels are provided continuously and they are available on our website as well.

Owing to the fact that droughts have become increasingly prevalent, a drought monitoring system was implemented and has been operated by our Directorate since 2018, where in addition to meteorological characteristics moisture content in soil and temperature are also recorded.
Drought indexes are calculated from these data, their applications are widespread in agriculture.