Since a long time SedNet wishes to compile all relevant experience in sediment management in a guidance document. Also SedNet would like to communicate with and educate students and other interested people about sediment management. In this way our work will be better understood and appreciated.

To achieve this SedNet organized the first workshop/meeting of the SedNet Working Group “Education-Science-Policy Interfacing & Sediment Management Concepts” (WG ESPI-SMC) on Wednesday 20th and Thursday 21st of November 2019 in Madrid. During the workshop experiences of setting up sediment management concepts of the Rhine, Elbe and Scheldt were exchanged. Also the lessons learned of making a sediment guidance document made in the USA in 2005 were presented. A rough plan of action to write out a SedNet guidance document about how to set up sediment management concepts was made. This guidance document will be developed by the WG ESPI-SMC in 2020-2021 and will be supplementary to the guidance document that the European Commission (ECOSTAT) is developing in the same period.

Also first ideas were gathered to create a “Sediment (serious) game”. A draft of this game will be developed and tested in 2020 by the WG ESPI-SMC. We hope to “play” the game on the next SedNet conference in 2021. If successful, it would be nice to create after that a professional online version of the game in different languages to teach secondary school students and university students the principals of good sediment management. Next to that the WG ESPI-SMC hopes to create an educational learning package. But the WG ESPI-SMC also wants to create communication tools like movies about good sediment management practices.

Want to follow the work of the WG ESPI-SMC? Want to help by mail or at one of the next workshops? Please, let us know. Contact: SedNet secretary!

For the full report of the kick-off meeting of WG ESPI-SMC click here.
You can request a copy of the annexes to the meeting report from the SedNet Secretariat.