Life Integrated River Tender

Start Date 01122018End Date 31122027Total Budget 16532640 EU Contribution 9919584 PROJECT DESCRIPTIONBACKGROUNDThe Water Framework Directive and the Floods Directive determine the future of rivers in Austria. Their implementation has led to 2 separate national programmes of measures. These are laid down in the RBMP River Basin Management Plan and the FRMP Flood Risk Management Plan which aim to achieve the specific objectives of each directive. The contents and aims of both are different and sometimes even contradictory. Article 9 of the FD explicitly states that Member States shall take appropriate steps to coordinate the application of the FD and WFD focusing on opportunities to improve efficiency exchange information and achieve common synergies and benefits with respect to the environmental objectives stemming from the WFD. In Austria both programmes of measures are currently coordinated with each other at national level. However challenges exist to coordinate the planningprocesses at regional level or river basins level. The foremost problem is that flood control measures of the past with their often hydro-morphological alterations are todays most pressing threat to the ecological aims of the WFD 80 of the Areas of Potential Significant Flood Risk miss the WFD requirements. The responsible Provincial Water Engineering Administrations Wasserbauverwaltungen and the Water Management Planning Bodies Wasserwirtschaftliche Planungsorgane face the challenge of coordinating and harmonising the national requirements from the FRMP and the RBMP for river basins on both regional and multi-regional level as efficiently and adequately as possible. Coordinating water protection measures as set down in the RBMP with those for the protection of people from water-related hazards as set down in the FRMP is extraordinarily challenging in Austria.OBJECTIVESThe overall objective of the LIFE IP IRIS AUSTRIA project is to elaborate test and successfully implement the River Development and Risk Management Concepts GE-RMs which address the challenge of streamlining flood protection according to the FD and ecological river restoration as required in the WFD. GE-RMs will be tested in selected pilot regions as an integrative planning instrument to implement national plans in accordance with EU environmental policies RBMP and FRMP. The project is expected to have a strong policy impact because in the medium to long term GE-RMs will be developed for all relevant rivers in Austria. The GE-RM planning instrument will be applied to7 pilot regions. The project will develop interdisciplinary cross-border concepts for measures including a priority ranking of the individual measures in accordance with the various objectives of the pilot regions RBMP FRMP Natura 2000 Austrian Floodplain Strategy etc.. Another objective is to establish integrated monitoring following implementation of these river development me