Bank retreat of a meandering river reach case study: River Irwell

Lack of data is often considered a limitation when undertaking morphological studies. This research deals with the morphological study of a small river experiencing bank erosion for which only limited data are available. A reach of the meandering gravel-bed river Irwell (United Kingdom) is taken as a case study in order to analyze the bank...

Towards Sustainable Flood Risk Management in the Rhine and Meuse River Basins

Flood risk (defined as a result of flood probability and potential damage) along Rhine and Meuse rivers is expected to increase in two ways: A. Climate change will cause a significant increase in the probability of extreme floods (according to a majority of climate change scenarios). B. The potential damage of floods (the level of investments in...

INTERMEUSE: The Meuse reconnected

In the coming years decision makers are confronted with the question how to combine aims for sustainable flood protection and floodplain rehabilitation in the best possible way. Both topics deal with spatial planning aspects and dimensions of measures. On this basis an evaluation method was developed within the IRMA/SPONGE project INTERMEUSE and...

Proceedings of the IRMA SPONGE Final Working Conference

Many important developments are currently taking place in the area of flood risk management in Europe. The IRMA-SPONGE Umbrella Program aims to contribute to these developments by co-ordinating and integrating 13 research projects, dealing with many aspects of flood risk management along the rivers Rhine and Meuse, in such a way that the output...

Interactive flood management and landscape planning in river systems

Development of a decision support system and analysis of retention options along the lower Rhine river.

STORM-Rhine: Simulation Tool for River Management

The Simulation Tool for River Management (STORM), based on the River Rhine case, aims to provide insight into river and floodplain management, by (1) raising awareness of river functions, (2) exploring alternative strategies, (3) showing the links between natural processes, spatial planning, engineering interventions, river functions and...

Development of flood management strategies for the Rhine and Meuse basins in the context of integrated river management

Water management of the rivers Rhine and Meuse is surrounded by major uncertainties. The central question is then: given the uncertainties, what is the best water management strategy? This raises the need for integrated scenarios that consider possible futures in a coherent and consistent way. Within the framework of IRMA-SPONGE a scenario study...

FRHYMAP: Flood Risk and HYdrological MAPping

The general objective of the FRHYMAP project was to integrate within a single mesoscale basin, the transboundary Alzette river basin, the various aspects concerning flooding events, reaching from the hydro-climatological analysis of field data to the risk assessment of socio-economic impacts, taking into account past and future climate and...

Evaluation of floodplain management strategies: The added value of wetlands

The objective of this project was to evaluate the beneficial effects of wetlands on flood risk reduction and water quality improvement in the Rhine. The analysis of wetland effects on flood risk reduction aimed at evaluating whether the position of a wetland in the basin – upstream or downstream – will influence the added value of the wetlands...

Extension of the Flood Forecasting Model FloRIJN

After the floods of 1993 and 1995 in the Rhine basin, the ICPR Action Plan on Flood Defence (ICPR, 1998) was drawn up, after which the environmental affairs ministers of the Rhine riparian states agreed on several meas-ures on the subject of improvement of flood forecasting and warning systems in the Rhine basin. One of the targets of this...

Spatial planning and supporting instruments for preventive flood management

The floods and the risk in the Rhine basin can only effectively be reduced if, in addition to technical measures, spatial planning regulates land use in flood prone areas. Furthermore future detention areas as well as room for river functions must be safeguarded in a long term perspective. In addition spatial planning can influence the...

Development and application of BIO-SAFE

BIO-SAFE is a policy and legislation based model for the assessment of impacts of flood prevention measures on biodiversity in river basins. Within the framework of IRMA-SPONGE, a transnational version of the model BIO-SAFE (Spreadsheet Application For Evaluation of BIOdiversity) for the rivers Rhine and Meuse was developed. The model was...

Guidelines for rehabilitation and management of floodplains: Ecology and safety combined

In the first part the focus point is the river landscape in general. This involves some physical characteristics, an overview of relevant policy documents for the river landscape in the Netherlands is given and a number of aspects in which the interrelations between the different rehabilitation measures come to light. The second part, consisting...

Cyclic floodplain rejuvenation

A new strategy based on floodplain measures for both flood risk management and enhancement of the biodiversity of the river Rhine.

Development of Methodologies for the Analysis of the Efficiency of Flood Reduction Measures in the Rhine Basin on the Basis of Reference Floods

After some years of extreme flooding in the 1990s extended efforts were made to improve flood protection by means of an integrated river basin management. Part of this strategy is the implementation of decentralised flood reduction measures (FRM). With this in mind, the CHR/IRMA-SPONGE Project DEFLOOD was initiated. By establishing a set of...

Irma-Sponge proposal

After the flooding events in the recent years in the Rhine and Meuse basin and the subsequently developed action plans, awareness has grown that the issue of flood risk management has to be considered in an integrated, transnational context where hydraulic, ecological and socio-economic functions of the river system are taken into account from...