RiverCare: Towards self-sustaining multi-functional rivers

Rivercare is a Dutch research programme focused on managing multi-functional rivers more sustainable within the next 10 to 50 years! We use fundamental research and innovative monitoring methods to improve the design and maintenance of some of the Room for the River interventions while looking at their effects in the river morphology and ecology.

The Meeting Room

River management involves inherent complexities and uncertainties. We simply do not know exactly how rivers behave. Yet, river managers have to discuss plans and make decisions in ‘the meeting room’ based on what we know, making trade-offs between for example flood safety, ecology and costs. RiverCare works on expanding our knowledge on rivers, but also specifically works towards providing this knowledge to the decision-makers.

The Floodplains

Floodplains are essential for rivers to prevent flooding of protected areas – i.e. inhabited areas behind the dikes – in case of high river discharges. However, this is only one of the functions of the floodplains: they are also important for, for example, ecology and provide many services to the society. In ‘the floodplains’, RiverCare researchers look at and monitor how floodplains, along river interventions such as side-channels and longitudinal training dams, develop from the perspectives of morphology and ecology.