Poland - Combining Green and Gray Infrastructure for National Flood Protection

Overview & Synopsis

Poland’s geography and climate make it particularly vulnerable to riverine flooding. Two major river systems - the Odra and the Vistula drain more than half of the country’s territory, flowing through densely populated and economically vital regions before emptying into the Baltic Sea. These river basins encompass much of Poland’s agricultural heartland and several of its largest metropolitan areas, including Wroclaw, Krakow, and Warsaw. The combination of low-lying floodplains, extensive river networks, and increasingly intense precipitation events has made floods one of the country’s most costly and recurrent natural hazards.