Water forms the basis for life, on the other hand destroys life during extreme floods. Rivers are the lifelines of the landscape, most human settlements are situated along these since thousands of years, related to all possibilities of usage - including navigation, hydropower and recreation - but also danger. These anthropogenic uses of rivers impact the ecological status, so that conflicts increase between economic use and ecological functionality. The interrelation between transport of water, sediments, morphodynamics of rivers, ecology and the consequences of river engineering measures are not fully understood and described.

The Christian Doppler Laboratory for Advanced methods in river monitoring, modelling and engineering aims to improve the understanding of processes in rivers, to design mathematical models for simulating river processes and to predict the consequences of engineering measures as well as to develop river engineering methods for improving navigation, ecology and flood protection.