Development and application of BIO-safe, a policy and legislation based model for the assessment of impacts of flood prevention measures on biodiversity in river basins : Executive summary

This transnational version of the model BIO-SAFE (Spreadsheet Application For Evaluation of BIOdiversity) for the rivers Rhine and Meuse was developed within the IRMA-SPONGE project of the INTERREG IIC framework of the European Union. BIO-SAFE was specifically designed for policy and legislation based impact assessment of flood risk reduction measures on biodiversity in floodplains. BIO-SAFE is an assessment model that quantifies the policy and legislation status of species in river basins for several taxonomic groups. The model uses data on presence of species and ecotopes. Results show that the BIO-SAFE method enables the user to express politically and legally based biodiversity values in quantitative terms and to compare biodiversity values for various taxonomic groups, landscape-ecological units (e.g. ecotopes) and physical planning scenarios. BIO-SAFE gives information regarding the degree to which floodplain designs, observed or predicted trends of floodplain developments or actual values meet goals set in (inter)national agreements. Assessments with BIO-SAFE, in an early stage of the planning process, of actual situations and different scenarios for an area can help direct the planning process in the stage where this is still possible. Because of its policy-based character, BIO-SAFE yields complementary information to more established ecological biodiversity indices and to single-species habitat models and ecological network analysis.