Rule-based decision support system for the morphological rehabilitation of watercourses

A rule-based decision support system (DSS) has been developed to assist decision makers in preparing the EU programme of measures. The rehabilitation of morphological structures of small and medium-sized watercourses in Germany is the main objective. The lack of quantitative data and knowledge is the main obstacle in hydromorphological modelling. Therefore, DSS manipulates the decision-making process in a qualitative manner based on the knowledge of experts. The acquired knowledge is used to formulate ‘if–then’ rules to solve modelling problems. The developed DSS enables decision makers to select any watercourse in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), investigate the feasibility of different rehabilitation measures, predict the impact on the morphological structure and prepare a programme of morphological measures including cost estimation. The system has been implemented for the watercourses in NRW and validated with field data. First results show good agreement between the proposed morphological rehabilitation measures and the implemented ones as well as a satisfactory performance in predicting the morphological structure after implementation of the rehabilitation measures.