River systems are vastly changing environments, not only due to natural process, but also human intervention plays an important role. With the many different river functions at play, large amounts of maintenance budgets are associated with river management. For decision makers it
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River systems are vastly changing environments, not only due to natural process, but also human intervention plays an important role. With the many different river functions at play, large amounts of maintenance budgets are associated with river management. For decision makers it is important to know expected costs or losses and the spread therein to decide on mitigating measures. Therefore a risk assessment for morphodynamic behaviour is needed. In this study a risk assessment for navigation is made relating uncertainty in discharge to economic consequences. Using MCS the uncertainty in discharge is propagated to a morphodynamic model of the Rhine: the Delft3D DVR model. The importance of including uncertainty in morphodynamic behaviour was proven since the bed level change in 15 years showed a 90 percent confidence interval of up to 1.2 meter. The water depths resulting from the model simulations is translated to a price increase using the load factor. An estimate for the welfare loss is given by the change in economic surplus (the benefits of a transaction). The expected yearly costs in 15 years amounts to 811 million euros with a skewed distribution. A case study applying nourishments on the IJssel, Boven-Rijn and Waal was compared with the reference case. This resulted in an expected benefit of 1.4 million euro, however the 5th percentile that a loss is well within the possibilities: -9.8 million euro, therefore again the importance of inclusion of uncertainties is proven. It is expected that the benefits are larger if other river functions are included in the study. Therefore, it is recommended that in future studies other river functions such as flood safety, cables and pipelines and environment and recreation are taken into account. It is also recommended that the supply and demand of inland water transport on either market or single trip scale is further investigated. Finally, it is also recommended that the definition of welfare loss for different stakeholders is further investigated and an estimate for the indirect costs is made to assess whether they should be included in the method.