Klimaatbestendige karakter van hedendaagse en toekomstige maatregelen

• Climate-check of existing measures in water management.
• Proposition and evaluation of new measures to be implemented on the Meuse river basin.

The objective is to assess whether water management measures are "climate-proof", which means resistant and efficient during their whole lifetime, under future climate conditions. The coherence (or incoherence) of the network of protections at the Meuse basin scale will also be demonstrated. Improvements can be proposed for the most vulnerable ones.

An inventory of existing measures is necessary (2009) as well as shared methods to evaluate them (ex. of probabilistic models MC-dikefail in Germany or FLORIS in the Netherlands). This action plan may necessitate the running of local hydraulic models (e.g. MOHICAN and WOLF for the Walloon Region).

The action will mainly consider flood protections (more numerous). However, measures against low-flows are being developed and special attention will be given to verify their sustainability.

Measures can be split into 5 categories, depending if they:

- reduce the failure of the protection work (advanced building technologies)

- reduce the damage (communication, forecast, action plans)

- reduce/increase the flow to the river (water retention in soils, reservoirs)

- reduce/increase water level (shape of the riverbed)

- international/national regulations (water savings, riverbed maintenance)

We will also climate-check, in advance, the new measures for the adaptation to floods and low-flows on the Meuse basin. The same methods will be used. New measures evaluated will be:

- planned by governments for future years but not yet effective,

- existing in neighbouring basins,

- large scale development of pilot investments.