Floods are a natural hazard evolving in space and time according to meteorological and river basin dynamics, so that a single flood event can affect different regions over the event duration. This physical mechanism introduces spatio-temporal relationships between flood records and losses at different locations over a given time window that should be taken into account for an effective assessme...

Hydrological droughts are expected to increase in frequency and severity due changing climate several river basins. Recent severe droughts, like the 2018 drought northwestern Europe, have shown major challenges for water management, not only terms of quantity, but also quality. However, these quality impacts received far less attention, limited understanding exists, particular regarding concent...

The REGFLUD-project, commissioned by Germany's Federal Research Ministry (BMBF), addresses the problem of reducing diffuse pollution from agricultural production. The objective of the project is the development and application of multi-criteria scientific methods, which are able to predict diffuse pollution in river basins subject to economic feasibility and social acceptability. The selected r...

During the past decades, large amounts of diffuse cadmium (Cd) and zinc (Zn) contaminated soil material have been deposited in the floodplains of the river Rhine in the Netherlands. As spatial information on soil quality is required at different scale levels covering the whole area, characterisation exclusively based on soil sampling and analysis is time-consuming and very expensive. A quicker ...

Hydraulic–morphological river models are applied to design and evaluate measures for purposes such as safety against flooding. These numerical models are all based on a deterministic approach. However, the modeling of river processes involves numerous uncertainties. The aim of this study is to identify the sources of uncertainty that induce the largest uncertainties in the model outcomes and qu...

Recurring debates in policy analysis revolve around the question, ‘Which political solutions exist to solve a societal issue?’ There still exist situations in which policy makers understand what options exist for reducing an environmental problem, but refrain from adopting any of these options. Here, policy analysts go one step further by asking: ‘Why is little done politically to solve a speci...

In hydrological modelling, traditionally one calibration was performed over a certain period before the model is used to study system. This implies that constant structure and parameterization are assumed. However, if catchment system subject changes not incorporated in model, parameter values found may be optimal for other periods, which called systemic change. The aim of this identify change ...