X
GO

Step IV – Sharing best practice

Learning from others and sharing lessons and experience from your own work improves best practice and may influence funding for similar schemes in the future.

Support and guidance

The RESTORE RiverWiki is a tool for sharing best practice and lessons learned. It showcases river restoration examples from across Europe in a Wikipedia website that anyone can freely add to and edit. It provides project data (including objectives, techniques and outcomes) as well as information on ecosystem benefits, stakeholder participation and costs.

Learning lessons from other's schemes and documenting your own for all to see

Users are encouraged to:
  • Search for suitable examples to help plan your project.
  • Submit your own project to celebrate your success.
  • Discuss the benefits of using certain techniques and approaches.
You can draw upon evidence and information such as green infrastructure guidance and strategies available at European, national and regional scales in order to develop your approach. 

Evaluation should be included in the costs of a project to avoid it being overlooked.

Gathering evidence of success
Under the Water Framework Directive, statutory agencies are responsible for routinely monitoring watercourses, and it may be possible to use their data to evaluate the outcome of your project. In many EU countries, technical universities and academic institutions may also be able to support project appraisal. You may wish to monitor public perception or the cost-effectiveness of the scheme.

Benefits:

  • Justifies the project spend.
  • Effective way to demonstrate the benefits to clients, politicians and the general public.
  • Outputs feed into future work and any modification to the project.

Sharing best practice

  • How to share good practice
  • Share project benefits with the public.
  • Demonstrate the project work you have carried out to the public and interested stakeholders with site tours, seminars and exhibitions.
  • Share information through industry accredited events and meetings.
  • Add project to the RESTORE RiverWiki

Celebrating your successes

Benefits of communicating your project

  • Increase in project exposure (awareness raising).
  • Positive knock-on impact on available funding for similar schemes.
  • Increased awareness of benefits of river restoration.
  • May be used as an exemplar project or case study by other prospective developers.
  • Continues to build the pool of available best practice for all to use. 

Relevant links & documents

  • Networks identified through the RESTORE project:
    River restoration networks and organisations across Europe. View here 
  • Register your project on the RESTORE River wiki
    The RESTORE River wiki is an interactive database of river restoration projects is a key tool to facilitate exchange of information to help achieve this. The RESTORE database and Wiki-pages will be an online source of information on river restoration practices across Europe and elsewhere. View here
  • European Centre for River Restoration
    A European network consisting of national centres and individual members bound by their mission to enhance and promote river restoration throughout Europe. The ECRR counteracts the threats to natural riverine habitats by fostering the establishment of national river restoration networks, and by disseminating information on river restoration. View here