The meeting will be held jointly with the 17th meeting of the joint Ad Hoc Expert Group on Water and Industrial Accidents. Both meetings will be held back-to-back with a transboundary response exercise between Germany and Poland on the Oder River and an International Seminar on Fire-Water Retention (4 - 5 September 2017), Slubice (Poland)
Following its third meeting, the Expert Group elaborated the draft safety guidelines and good practices for fire-water retention (see below). The objective of the safety guidelines is to enhance existing practices with regard to fire-water retention and to promote harmonized safety standards in the UNECE region. To ensure their broad acceptance and implementation upon finalization, Focal Points to the Industrial Accidents and Water Conventions, international organizations, international river basin commissions, strategic partners, industry associations and other stakeholders are encouraged to review the draft safety guidelines and provide their comments by 15 December 2017 to the secretariat at [email protected]. Following the receipt of comments by the deadline, the safety guidelines will be finalized in early 2018 and a final draft version will be submitted to the 13th meeting of the Working Group on Integrated Water Resource Management (Geneva, 29-30 May 2018) and to the Bureaux of the UNECE Water and Industrial Accidents Conventions. It is expected that the final UNECE Safety Guidelines and Good Practices for Fire-water Retention be presented for endorsement at the 8th session of the meeting of the Parties to the Water Convention (Astana, 10-12 October 2018) and at the 10th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Industrial Accidents Convention (Geneva, 4-6 December 2018).
Draft safety guidelines and good practices for fire-water retention