Impact of climate change on inundation hazard along the river Meuse

As a part of the effort to scientifically inform the development of the adaptation strategy for the Meuse basin, we detail hereafter the generation of integrated climate and hydrological scenarios for the whole basin. We also present the setup of a first coordinated hydraulic modelling from spring to mouth of the river Meuse. The latter has enabled to compute the range of change in inundation hazard under the “wet” transnational hydrological scenario for the time slices 2021-2050 and 2071-2100. A significantly higher impact of climate change has been found in the middle part of the Meuse basin, compared to the upper and the lower parts. These conclusions have been further confirmed by a refined analysis conducted for a 100 km-long stretch of the river Meuse crossing the Belgian-Dutch border.