Rob Hermans  and Bernhard Hahn
Research Institute for Knowledge Systems BV,P.O. Box 463,6200 AL Maastricht,The Netherlands

Abstract: Over the last decades river basin management has become increasingly complex. Increasing demands of society regarding use and protection of water bodies, new views and strategies towards (the making of) policy for river basin management call for a multidisciplinary approach for river basin management. Since methodologies and tools for such a multidisciplinary approach are not readily available, the German Federal Institute of Hydrology  in the year 2000 initiated the project ¡®Towards a generic tool for river basin management¡¯, focused on the development of an integrated decision support system for the Elbe rive catchment in Germany.  The ultimate goal of the project was to develop a generic tool, which helps water managers to formulate policy for river basin management and to take appropriate measures to realize policy objectives. The software realization of such a tool is called a Decision Support System (DSS) or more specific for the domain at hand: Integrated River Basin Management Decision Support System (IRBM-DSS).

In this paper we focus on two main questions:
1. What is a Generic Integrated River Basin Management Decision Support System?
2. What lessons can be learned from the example of the IRBM-DSS for the Elbe river in Germany?

Key words: Generic tool, IRBM-DSS, Elbe river catchment