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Abstract

In 2000, the European Union launched the Water Framework Directive (WFD) (EU, 2000), which calls to achieve a good ecological status of all water bodies by 2015 through integrated river basin management. Integrated models are therefore necessary to serve as tools for river basin management in the scope of the WFD. Despite large investments made for the management of the Brussels’ sewer systems, the Zenne river still receives high loads of pollutants, especially considering the small size of this receiving water body. An interuniversity, multidisciplinary research project ‘Good Ecological Status of the river Zenne (GESZ)’ was therefore launched to evaluate the effects of the wastewater management plans in the river basin on the ecological functioning of the river. Hereto, we considered different water quantity and quality processes the hydrology in the river basin, the hydraulics in the river and in the sewers, erosion and sediment transport, the Carbon-Nitrogen- Phosphorus (C-N-P) cycle, the transport of trace metals and the transport and decay of the faecal indicator bacteria. To this purpose, we used different models (based on existing as well as on new simulators). These simulators needed to be integrated, in view of a holistic analysis of the basin. We decided to opt for the Open Modelling Interface – OpenMI (Moore and Tindall, 2005) to build various integrated models.

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