This report is produced within the framework of Harmoni-CA – Harmonised Modelling Tools for integrated River Basin Management. Harmoni-CA is a concerted action supported by the European Commission under the Fifth Framework Programme and contributing to the implementation of the Key Action “Sustainable Management and Quality of Water (EKVI-2001-00192). Harmoni-CA is aiming to facilitate the dialogue and help bridging the gap between research and policy, by synthesising available knowledge produced by the various RTD (CatchMod) projects and facilitating the development and the use of these methodologies and tools to support the use of Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) tools in implementing the Water Framework Directive (WFD).
Harmoni-CA work package 4 (WP4) is working with “Joint use of Monitoring and Modelling”, especially in relation to implementing the WFD. In this context it has been found relevant to give an overview on the status of data in terms of availability and accessibility; both in relation to the implementation of the Directive and in relation to related research activities. To elaborate the issue of joint monitoring and modelling five workshops were organised between 2004 and 2007. Common frames for the workshops have been that it was essential to attract the right people; both with respect to researchers capable of bringing forward ideas in an easy understandable way and when it comes to practitioners representing the water management world. This has not been an easy task, especially as most national practitioners are not used to attending international conferences or workshops conducted in English. Thus the first bottleneck was to identify the relevant persons and persuade them to attend the workshops. We would like to thank the about 80 people for their contributions to our workshops. The 80 participants came from 21 of 27 EC countries plus Norway, Moldava, Ukraine and the US. The balance between researchers/modellers and water managers were equal, a few representing both sides. Besides, a couple of consultants attended the workshops, mostly presenting tangible examples from all around the world. Several attended more than one workshop. Experiences, conclusions, recommendations and lessons learned are brought forward in this report.
The information in the sections on data availability and previous modelling studies in the eight selected river basins have been reviewed and modified by the following HarmoniRiB partners: Technical University of Crete, Chania (Ioannis Tsanis); Universidad de Castilla la Mancha, Albacete (Salomon Montesinos); Water Research Institute CNR-IRSA, Bari (Guiseppe Passarella); Institute of Inland Water Management and Waste Water Treatment, RIZA, Lelystad (Michiel Blind); Centre for Environmental Research, UFZ, Magdeburg (Michael Rode); Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Wallingford (Roger Moore); Povodi Moravy, Brno (Pavel Biza); and Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, GEUS, Copenhagen (Jens Christian Refsgaard). Their support is greatfully acknowledged. Earlier versions of this document has been reviewed by Dr. Bernardas Paukstys, Water House, Vilnius, Lithuania, Mr. Morten Sørensen, Environment Centre Odense, Denmark and Dr. Faycal Bouraoui, Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy and discussed at the Harmoni-CA Review Workshop held in Köln 28/02 – 02/03/2007. The final document has benefited from comments from the participants at the fifth Harmoni-CA WP4 workshop held in Budapest 20/06 – 21/06/2007 and from Dr. Wim de Lange, RIZA, The Netherlands and Dr. Ilke Borowski, University of Osnabrück, Germany.