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River meanders migrate over time and the consequences of this migration can create a problem for bridges and embankments near the river. This is why it is important to predict the lateral extent of future migration over the life of neighboring infrastructure. In the observation method for meander migration (OMM), the past movement and velocity history of the meander are used to back-calculate site specific erosion parameters. Those parameters serve as input to predict the meander migration for a chosen future velocity hydrograph. In this article and after a review of existing knowledge, the analytical steps leading to the development of the OMM are described, then the field and laboratory work at four full-scale meander migration case histories are presented, and then the four full-scale meander migration case histories are used to evaluate the OMM. The OMM has been automated in an Excel spreadsheet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]