The two-day workshop, funded under the BMUV's Environmental Research Plan, will take place on 30 and 31 May 2022 at the Federal Environment Agency in Dessau (Germany) and will be dedicated to the topic of "Technical-Hydraulic Assessment of Fish Protection and Downstream Migration at Hydropower Plants".

At the past events, fish protection objectives, fish protection measures, functional controls and monitoring were comprehensively discussed, with the topic of assessment being regularly touched upon but not discussed in depth. Now, at the 9th workshop, the focus will be on the topic of evaluating fish protection and fish migration at hydraulic structures based on technical-hydraulic parameters.

Different technical and legal perspectives as well as value systems are involved in the assessment procedure for fish protection and migration, which can lead to different levels of acceptance of the procedure or to diverging assessments of individual procedural steps or parameters. The event is dedicated to the presentation and discussion of these different points of view. The first block of the event will therefore address both the technical aspects and challenges of evaluating fish protection and downstream migration at the level of the structure and the watercourse system, and reflect on the expectations of different interest groups regarding an evaluation system.

This discussion will continue with a draft technical-hydraulic classification system for fish protection and downstream migration, which is currently being developed and will form the core of the event. The draft will be presented at the forum and applied and tested in three working groups. There will be an opportunity for the participants to talk to each other as well as to the procedure developers and to comment on the procedure design, its application and the resulting outcomes.