Abstract
As the pressures from both anthropogenic and natural causes on environmental systems increase, it is no longer effective or efficient to deal with one issue at a time, since solving a singular problem often causes damaging impacts on other environmental compartments or in other places. We must consider the consequences of our actions on all parts of the environment in an integrated way and configure these actions to cope with an uncertain future. These challenges demand a different approach in order to achieve actual improvement of the ecological quality of our river basins and thus sustain the goods and services they provide for the well-being of society. Risk-informed management is this new approach. It involves the integrated application of three key principles: be well informed, manage adaptively and take a participatory approach. This chapter introduces this risk-informed management approach as it was developed in the European Commission funded project RISKBASE and provides an introduction to rest of this book where the key principles are explained and underpinned in detail.
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Notes
- 1.
See for more info: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/water/flood_risk/index.htm
- 2.
For detailed information see: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/water/water-framework/index_en.html
- 3.
See for more info: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/water/blueprint/index_en.htm
- 4.
See IEAM, 2009, Vol. 5, No 1, pp 2–126: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ieam.v5.1/issuetoc
- 5.
- 6.
Note: throughout this book—besides the term ‘river basin’—also the term ‘catchment’ is sometimes used. Both terms are regarded more or less synonym in this book. However, often a catchment is perceived smaller in scale than a river basin. A river basin or catchment can be subdivided in sub-basins or sub-catchments
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Acknowledgements
The fundament for this book was laid in the RISKBASE project and thus first of all we—the authors of this introduction chapter—greatly acknowledge the European Commission for having funded this project. Furthermore, this book could be realised because we received very valuable input of numerous people—unfortunately too many to mention them all individually (and thus risking to unintended forget one or more)—who participated and contributed to the events organised by RISKBASE. However, the most crucial for getting this book done was the commitment and patience of the many (co-)authors who wrote the book chapters and who adapted their chapters following the suggestions of the book editors.
A GREAT THANK YOU to all of you and we wish the readers of this book enjoyable reading!
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Brils, J. et al. (2014). Introduction: The Need for Risk-Informed River Basin Management. In: Brils, J., Brack, W., Müller-Grabherr, D., Négrel, P., Vermaat, J. (eds) Risk-Informed Management of European River Basins. The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry, vol 29. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38598-8_1
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