Review on costs and benefits of river restoration. Data were collected in a database to empirically investigate the costs of river restoration measures throughout Europe. Also, a summary of restoration planning and the specific measures which can inform the future development of cost-benefit analysis and their application were introduced. A non-exhaustive review of peer-reviewed literature and technical reports was conducted to elicit the effects of individual measures, providing a basis for the analysis of restoration benefits.

Several ecological and hydromorphological assessment methods have been developed in different countries during the last years, with notable differences in terms of aims, scales, and approaches. In many cases, strengths and limitations of the different types of methods are not yet sufficiently known, although they are widely used in some European countries.