Stakeholders' lack of awareness, involvement and participation in the planning and management of water resources and flood risk often creates problems in the acceptance and implementation of proposed measures. Interactions among stakeholders and decision makers build awareness, trust, enhance cooperation and negotiation for best possible measures.
The main challenge in stakeholder participation is maintaining the participatory process. Stakeholders' spatial distribution, limitation of financial resources and diverse stakeholders' interest (even opposed) are some of the hindrances in maintaining the participatory process.
Addressing these challenges and hindrances, this research developed and implemented three frameworks for developing "Networked Environments for Stakeholder Participation" (NESPs). Networked environments are web-based computer-aided or mobile environments for remote virtual interaction between participating entities such as stakeholders. NESPs are envisioned to enable stakeholder participation by providing sharing of information, planning, negotiating and decision support. NESPs were implemented in five real case studies (1) Lakes of Noord-Brabant, The Netherlands, (2) Danube river (Braila-Isaccea section), Romania, (3) Somes Mare catchment, Romania, (4) Cranbrook catchment, London and (5) Alster catchment, Hamburg, Germany.
The overall results of the research show that networked environments can address the challenges and hindrances in stakeholder participation and enhance participation in water resources and flood management.
About the Author: Adrian Delos Santos Almoradie (1981, Masbate, Philippines). BSc. Civil Engineering (2003), University of San Carlos - Technological Center (Cebu City), . he worked as a Hydrological engineer in the Water Resources Center (WRC) of University of San Carlos for 2 years. In 2006 he enrolled in the MSc programme at UNESCO-IHE, Delft the Netherlands. In 2008 he obtained a MSc degree in Water Science and Engineering -Hydroinformatics specialization.
He worked for a year in a special program of the Hydroinformatics chair group at UNESCO-IHE, before starting his PhD in 2009. His PhD task included co-supervision of MSc students during their thesis and some lecturing or seminars. During his MSc and PhD studies, he expanded his research interest on flood risk and water resources management, stakeholder participation, multi-criteria analysis, decision support systems, hydrology-hydrometry, hydrological (surface and groundwater) and flood modelling, uncertainty analysis, GIS, web-based GIS, Spatial and Temporal Data Infrastructure (STDI), database management system and development of web-based computer and mobile applications for water resources management.
Currently he is working as a Post-Doc with the Water Profile- Water resources management and Eco-Hydrology group of Prof. Mariele Evers in the Department of Geography, University of Bonn, Germany.
