ECRR TOOLKIT/DATABASE PROJECT -- PRESENTATION AND QUESTIONNARE --

Dear ECRR member, a few months have passed since our Fourth Conference on River Restoration in Venice. During this period the ECRR has been working on some of the future actions presented by Bart Fokkens, ECRR Chairman, during the panel session and also discussed in the workshop n. 11 Integrating science with practice: a toolkit of good practice advice and a database of river restoration projects. One of the foreseen actions is the development of a toolkit and a database on river restoration, in order to facilitate policy makers, water managers, practitioners, developers and researchers in the practical implementation of the Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC). During the last Management Board meeting, held in Madrid in November 2008, the ECRR board identified a core group with the task of developing the idea of the database and the toolkit (as a supportive tool on river restoration, following the UK experience on toolbox). Then, on 8th-9th January 2009, the core group met at Cirfs office in Mestre-Venice (Italy) to define the topics of the project and to build an action plan that will look for funding. DRAFT OF THE TOOLKIT/DATABASE PROJECT The draft project idea can be briefly summarized as follows: Rationale River Restoration (RR) can significantly support and enhance River Basin management; still today, however, it is not known and considered sufficiently, nor it is realized that it is indeed an important component of the Water Framework Directive implementation. Knowing what RR is through experiences is key; providing information about techniques useful to achieve a given specific objective can also be very interesting and useful. Perhaps there is something more we can do, however, in order to bring RR to be considered a key approach and pool of methodologies and techniques to support River Basin planning and management, and, in particular, to support the implementation of EU Directives (first but not last the Water Framework Directive); indeed, much more coordination and integration between the usual River Basin approaches and tools and those of RR has to be achieved. In particular, before a design stage is undertaken to approach a specific problem, we need, in general, to first address key questions like: whether it makes really sense to pose that objective; what is the proper scale to address a given problem and what the nature of the involved actions (structural versus non structural); what is the desirable trade-off amongst the key objectives at stake (nature, risk, cost, social disturbance, etc.); whether it is worth addressing that problem and investing in that given action From these considerations we derived the following (preliminary) conceptual framework for the project proposal at hand:

Goal: Providing a working basis to consider river restoration a necessary constituent of any river basin planning and management activity and to foster the widespread implementation of river restoration practice. Objective Guiding the user (DMs, planners, practitioners and stakeholders) to ensure that foreseen decisions about what to do to improve my river are sound, i.e. they indeed reflect the most appropriate strategy (structured action-lines) and the most desirable trade-off alternative (combination of actions under those action-lines), given the context and the problems/pressure factors at hand, and taking a wide, basin-scale approach, while capitalizing on past experiences to identify most effective river restoration interventions Contents 1. DATABASE ON RIVER RESTORATION PROJECTS: we will take into account measures related to rivers and floodplains. We aim at including the most significant projects, covering as much typologies and pressures/types of measures as possible. 2. RIVER RESTORATION GUIDANCE TOOL: it is not a decision support system in the sense of a modelling/mathematical tool, but a "logical" support tool, guiding the decision maker/project manager through the most appropriate alternative (line of action) given the environmental problem/pressure factors at hand; its aim is to foster a wider, basin scale approach and river restoration measures proven to be more effective in past experiences (going further than business as usual). This component implies to carry out a review and assessment of existing Decision Support Systems and models, including discussions and feedbacks from their users (if any); the aim is to clarify what is applicable in practice and at what conditions (freeware, patented, amount of data needed,...) in river restoration related fields. 3. TOOLBOX OF RIVER RESTORATION TECHNIQUES: how to implement in practice a given river restoration technique? What are the expected effects? What the forecast costs?

PURPOSE of this QUESTIONNAIRE The ECRR considers this initiative as very important for its network and, therefore, we are strongly interested in receiving comments and information from as many members as possible, trying to give them the chance to contribute to this new key-activity. As first step, we would like to receive answers to the following questions (please see the next pages).

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS: 1. Do you consider the Toolkit/Database an important activity? Do you like this idea or not? What weaknesses do you see/what would you add?

2. Would you be able to provide us (now and/or in the future) information about your RR projects in order to populate ECRR database?

3. Do you know other similar experiences run in the past or currently going on?

SPECIFIC CONSIDERATIONS The following two questions are really important for us, as they will help the ECRR in understanding how to gather the documentation to be included in the project. Please answer carefully! 4. What are your needs/gaps and which of the components (DB, Guidelines, Toolkit, other) you feel more important (specify please if it is related to institutional planning/management, consultancy, research, or other)?

5. Could you provide us useful information (about databases, case studies, guidelines, methodologies, DSS, models, etc.)?

If you are interested in giving a feedback, please be so kind to sent this questionnaire back to the ECRR secretary: info@ecrr.org

DEADLINE IMPORTANT It is very important for us to receive your feedback as soon as possible; if it will come later than Wednesday 11 February 2009 it will be harder for us to consider it.

Thank you in advance for your kind cooperation!