Existing river basin networks and their suitability to support research studies of relevance for WFD implementation

River Basin Networks (RBNs) are data centres in support of research or water management. The idea of organizing a session on RBNs originated from the observation that many existing RBNs focus mainly on hydrologic and water quality aspects and as such are not fitted to sturies related to the development of Integrated River Basin Management Plans (IRBMPs) as requested by the Water Framework Directive (WFD). Fundamentally, there are two key deficiencies in these networks: (1) they are restricted to physical and chemical data and lack socio-economic data and and (2) they frequently do not incorporate associated uncertainties. The IRBMP process, as described in the WFD, focuses on integrated management, involving all physical domains in water management, sectors of water use, socio-economics and stakeholder participation. In order to support WFD implementation and related researches, it is necessary to provide well documented datasets, suitable for studying the influence of uncertainty on management decisions and to provide examples of their use in the development of integrated water management plans. The session aimed to elaborate possibilities of promoting and making efforts to create or keep alive a Data Centre suitable for RBM data and discuss the ways to obtain funds to reach this objective. The most important conclusions of the session were that there is a common need for a RBN, which support all aspects of WFD implementation. There was consensus that the HarmoniRiB RBN appears to be a first step in developing such a network and the foremost candidate for such a network considering the discussed RBNs.