Supporting tools for decisional process within Water Framework Directive: from EU context to MODELKEY perspective

The European Water Framework Directive (WFD; 2000/60/CE) prescribes a series of tasks for properly assessing and managing river basins with the ultimate aim of protecting and restoring the overall quality status of European surface waters by 2015. In this context, Decision Support Systems (DSSs) and tools are needed providing water managers and decision makers with specific functionalities for integrating environmental and socio-economic factors, for comparing and selecting management alternatives, for assuring stakeholders involvement and participation, for communicating and visualising results in a transparent and simple way. Currently, different DSSs are available addressing specific assessment and management needs within WFD. In particular, a risk-based DSS is under development within the MODELKEY EU project (2005-2010) whose main objectives are i) to evaluate risks posed by pollutants and other stressors on aquatic ecosystems by interlinking exposure/effect models and testing tools, ii) to integrate environmental and socio-economic information for targeting management actions and iii) to facilitate groups of experts and stakeholders involvement. The main outcome of the system is the calculation of Integrated Risk Indices (IRI) based on Weight of Evidence approaches and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis. Although the MODELKEY DSS responds to WFD requirements, it is a flexible system adaptable also to other legislative contexts. A review of developed or in progress systems and tools supporting WFD implementation is presented and the main functionalities and technical features of the MODELKEY DSS software are described.