C O N T E N T S - Physical Land Resources - Vrije Universiteit Brussel

if there are opportunities for developing adaptation measures to climate changepolicies within its framework. The aim of this thesis is precisely to determine thepossibilities of the management at river basin level to deal with climate change issues,illustrating conclusions will be provided with in a case study, the Dender river basin(Belgium). In the first place, the thesis presents the scientific background about climatechange consequences on the water cycle and the projections. The outcomes of aclimatic modelling for the Dender river catchment will be used as a base for thefollowing investigation. After a brief overview of the European water legislation, asensitivity and opportunity analysis will be carried out to determine the strength andweakness of the WFD to tackle climate change variations. Some adaptation strategiesfor policy planning will be proposed and illustrated for the ongoing procedure onto theDender river basin.NEYSKENS Isabelle and SMOLDERS SvenLinking of Hydraulic Models Through the OpenMIPromotor: P. WillemsThe water framework directive (2000) aims at integrated water management on a basinscale. In this study, integrated water management is investigated. The focus is set onthe interaction between the sewer system and the river system. In the past, thisinteraction is widely studied, in both one-directional and two-directional ways. TheOpenMI is a tool that provides the linking of hydraulic models in a two-directional way.The technical value as well as the methodological usefulness is understood through thisresearch. Hydraulic models made in the InfoWorks CS and RS software are linked witheach other. To understand the effect of using the OpenMI on the produced data, smalland simple cases were used to test what happened with the data results. It wasconcluded that the choice of the simulation timestep as well as the source of the triggerare very important for the preciseness of the produced data. The second objectivecontributed to the usefulness of the OpenMI tool on more complex hydraulic models. Itappeared that long term simulations done for two-directional linked models with theOpenMI may not (yet) be realistic (with the present generation of computers) in thesense of data storage and the simulation time.- 17 -