Assessing alternative discharge distributions at the Dutch Rhine Bifurcations to address climate change impacts by 2100

Climate change poses significant challenges to
river systems. For the river Rhine, this means that
the discharge variability is changing through more
frequent and lower flows in the summer and more
extreme discharge peaks in the winter (Buitink et
al., 2023). This inevitably impacts functions
humans allocated to rivers over the past century.
In case of the Dutch Rhine system, river
branches are heavily engineered through the
construction of hydraulic structures to support
multiple functions including providing conveyance
capacity (i.e. flood safety), fresh water supply and
navigation, as the Rhine is one of Europe major
waterways. However, often these interventions
were carried out with focussing on one specific
river function in mind.
All these human interventions, together
with some high discharge events have also
contributed to alterations in the river’s discharge
(distribution) over the two bifurcations in the
Netherlands.
To understand how climate change affects
future river functions in relation to each other, we
aimed at defining performance indicators for each
river function and to use these in a Multi Criteria
Analysis to investigate the effects of climate
change in the Dutch Rhine at a system scale.
Additionally, we used this framework to compare
alternative discharge distributions and large scale
river widening measures to adapt for climate
change.