Chapter 8: Monitoring and data.

With growing environmental awareness and increasing climate pressures on low-lying deltas, modern-day society puts incredibly strong demands on the sustainability of water infrastructure projects. Classic approaches towards the design and implementation of such projects no longer suffice in satisfying these demands. Recent approaches look beyond the scope of isolated dredging activities and embrace a wider context, by considering water infrastructure development projects as an opportunity to also add value to the (natural and socio-economic) system in order to achieve more sustainable projects. In the past 10-15 years, the international dredging community has embraced this kind of thinking and the approach to dredging has been transformed. From mainly dealing with negative impacts, often at the end of the project design and the start of the construction phase, towards a much more proactive approach where water infrastructure projects are being considered as part of the natural and socio-economic system in which they are situated, and stakeholders are being engaged much earlier in the project development process to facilitate the search for opportunities to create added value. This change in attitude has a huge influence on the initiation, planning and design, execution and maintenance of water infrastructure projects. Comprehensive guidance on how to bring this into practice has to date been lacking. With this book a wide range of professionals have attempted to collect and integrate their experiences and best practices, to deliver this state-of-the-art guidance book on Dredging for Sustainable Infrastructure. Comprised of nine chapters, the book discusses the topics of integrating dredging into sustainable development, sustainability in project initiation, planning and design, assessment and management of sustainability, equipment and methods, dredged material management, models and tools, and monitoring and data