Networked Environments for Stakeholder Participation in Water Resources and Flood Management: UNESCO-IHE PhD Thesis

Stakeholders’ lack of awareness, involvement and participation in the planning and management of water resources and flood risk often creates problems in the acceptance and implementation of proposed measures. Interactions among stakeholders and decision makers build awareness, trust, enhance cooperation and negotiation for best possible measures. The main challenge in stakeholder participation is maintaining the participatory process. Stakeholders’ spatial distribution, limitation of financial resources and diverse stakeholders’ interest (even opposed) are some of the hindrances in maintaining the participatory process. Addressing these challenges and hindrances, this research developed and implemented three frameworks for developing "Networked Environments for Stakeholder Participation" (NESPs). Networked environments are web-based computer-aided or mobile environments for remote virtual interaction between participating entities such as stakeholders. NESPs are envisioned to enable stakeholder participation by providing sharing of information, planning, negotiating and decision support. NESPs were implemented in five real case studies (1) Lakes of Noord-Brabant, The Netherlands, (2) Danube river (Braila-Isaccea section), Romania, (3) Somes Mare catchment, Romania, (4) Cranbrook catchment, London and (5) Alster catchment, Hamburg, Germany. The overall results of the research show that networked environments can address the challenges and hindrances in stakeholder participation and enhance participation in water resources and flood management. Content: Machine generated contents note: 1.1.Background -- 1.2.Water resources and flood management in EU and non-EU countries -- 1.3.Importance of stakeholder participation -- 1.4.Towards a Networked Environment for Stakeholder Participation (NESP) -- 1.5.Objective of this research -- 1.6.Outline of the thesis -- 2.1.Introduction -- 2.2.Objectives, benefits and potential pitfalls in stakeholder participation -- 2.3.Types of participation -- 2.3.1.Information and knowledge sharing -- 2.3.2.Consultative participation -- 2.3.3.Collaborative decision making -- 2.4.Participatory process -- 2.5.Lessons learned in stakeholder participation -- 2.6.Information dissemination and participation in a Networked Environment (NE) -- 2.6.1.Information dissemination in a NE -- 2.6.2.Participation in a NE -- 2.7.Concluding remarks -- 3.1.Noord-Brabant lakes, the Netherlands -- 3.2.Danube river (Braila-Isaccea section), Romania -- 3.3.Somes Mare catchment, Romania -- Contents note continued: 3.4.Cranbrook catchment, London, United Kingdom -- 3.5.Alster catchment, Hamburg, Germany -- 3.6.Concluding remarks -- 4.1.Introduction -- 4.2.Conceptual frameworks -- 4.2.1.NESP-IKS (Information and Knowledge Sharing) -- 4.2.2.NESP-CP (Consultative Participation) -- 4.2.3.NESP-CDM (Collaborative Decision Making) -- 4.3.Adaptation of the framework to different cases -- 4.4.Concluding remarks -- 5.1.Introduction -- 5.2.Review of technologies for NESP -- 5.2.1.Web based technologies -- 5.2.2.Mobile technologies -- 5.2.3.Spatial Data Infrastructure and Water Mark-up Language (WaterML) 2.0 -- 5.2.4.Other technologies -- 5.3.Criteria for selection of technology -- 5.4.Concluding remarks -- 6.1.Introduction -- 6.2.NESP-IKS: Noord Brabant lakes -- 6.2.1.Generic conceptual and final design -- 6.2.2.Implemented design of the Noord-Brabant Water Quality platform -- 6.3.NESP-CP: Danube river and Somes Mare catchment -- 6.3.1.Generic conceptual and final design -- Contents note continued: 6.3.2.Implemented design of the Somes Mare NESP flood platform -- 6.3.3.Implemented design of the Danube NESP flood platform -- 6.4.NESP-CDM: Cranbrook and Alster catchment -- 6.4.1.Generic conceptual and final design -- 6.4.2.Implemented design -- 6.5.Concluding remarks -- 7.1.Deployment methods -- 7.2.Evaluation methods -- 7.3.NESP-IKS: Noord Brabant lakes -- 7.3.1.Deployment -- 7.3.2.Stakeholders evaluation -- 7.4.NESP-CP 1: Somes Mare catchment -- 7.4.1.Deployment -- 7.4.2.Stakeholder evaluation -- 7.5.NESP-CP 2: Danube river (Braila-Isaccea section) -- 7.5.1.Deployment -- 7.5.2.Stakeholder evaluation (Danube and Somes Mare) -- 7.6.NESP-CDM 1: Cranbrook catchment -- 7.6.1.Deployment -- 7.6.2.Stakeholder evaluation -- 7.7.NESP- CDM 2: Alster catchment -- 7.7.1.Deployment -- 7.7.2.Stakeholder evaluation (Alster and Cranbrook catchment) -- 7.8.Concluding remarks -- 7.8.1.NESP-IKS -- 7.8.2.NESP-CP -- 7.8.3.NESP-CDM -- 8.1.Conclusions -- Contents note continued: 8.1.1.General conclusion -- 8.1.2.NESP-IKS -- 8.1.3.NESP-CP -- 8.1.4.NESP-CDM -- 8.1.5.Judgement engine: TOPSIS method -- 8.1.6.Model uncertainty -- 8.1.7.NESP information technologies -- 8.2.Recommendations and future work -- 8.2.1.Methods -- Multi criteria decision methods -- Uncertainty analysis -- Game theory -- 8.2.2.Web-based implementation of water related applications -- Semi-distributed Conceptual Models -- Flood Forecasting System -- Data Driven Models -- 8.2.3.Group Visualisation Techniques.