Samenvatting

The Southwest Delta is a dynamic area where three of the largest rivers in the
Netherlands flow out into the North Sea. The area is internationally famous for its natural values, but nature and human interventions have difficulty co-existing. A healthy delta can support functions that humans derive from the delta; therefore, knowledge of the water system and morphology is essential for decision-making. This knowledge has been scattered within the organization of Rijkswaterstaat due to organizational changes and in-and outflow of employees. Therefore, Rijkswaterstaat wants to organize a knowledge community for lake Grevelingen with all other knowledge holding stakeholders in the area, in order to bring all available knowledge together and support future decision-making. This research is thus focused on how this community can be organized. First, a theoretical base has been established. Several approaches to ‘delta knowledge’ are identified; how ‘knowledge management’ works has been researched; important aspects for knowledge accessing, sharing and anchoring have been described and definitions of what a ‘knowledge community’ is have been compared. After establishing this base, approaches were applied to the case of lake Grevelingen. The most important result about defining delta knowledge is applying the layer model. This established boundaries and relationships within this knowledge theme. Secondly, the knowledge management cycle steps were applied to Rijkswaterstaat which resulted in an analysis of the current knowledge management situation. The important aspects for knowledge accessing, sharing and anchoring were the base on which indicators were formulated and tested with key stakeholders.
This resulted in 9 indicators who represent the aspects key-stakeholders value the most to measure. Finally, several characteristics derived from the theoretical framework were applied to three different knowledge networks to identify success factors.
Additional interviews with key stakeholders gave insight in expectations, roles and most suitable indicators throughout all results in this research. These results all together give a clear insight in how key-stakeholders want the community to look like, which aspects need to be negotiated and how theory can support this vision. This is addressed in the conclusion, discussion and recommendations of this research.