Relocating a city, challenges and opportunities for the transition of the water infrastructure in Kiruna

The city of Kiruna in Northern Sweden has become known for the need to relocate major parts of the city. Current and future mining activities in the world’s largest underground iron ore mine are the cause of land subsidence that requires relocation of substantial parts of the town including its water infrastructure. Figure 1 shows the area...

Green-blue multifunctional infrastructure: An urban landscape system design new approach

Cities exhibit unique and ever-changing spatial layouts formed by nested natural and socio-economic systems, sub-systems and components resulting from exchange, interaction, and interdependency processes. In this context, managing surface water in urban areas requires new approaches that integrate the knowledge about territorial patterns and...

Learning and Action Alliances for innovation and active learning in a European context

Room for the River: International relevance

World-wide the frequency and impacts of flooding exhibit a steep increasing trend1. The key drivers are the world’s population growth and the increase of socio-economic activities (development) in flood-prone areas, and society’s growing interdependency on flood protection and drainage infrastructure of which a significant part is of unknown or...

Adaptive multi-level governance through social learning: River basin management in the Netherlands

This paper presents a case study of a new adaptive, multi-level governance approach for river basin management designed to stimulate social learning and to be adjusted based on lessons learnt and changing political and economical context. The floods of 1993 and 1995 in the Netherlands and climate change triggered a paradigm shift in flood...

Taming global flood disasters: lessons learned from Dutch experience

There is a growing international recognition that flood risk management in optima forma should be a programmed and flexible process of continuously improving management practices by active learning about the outcome of earlier and ongoing interventions and drivers of change. In the Netherlands, such a long-term, adaptive flood risk management...

Transition in governance of river basin management in The Netherlands through multi-level social learning

This paper presents a case study of a new adaptive, multi-level governance approach that supported a transition in river basin management in the Netherlands. The floods of 1993 and 1995 in the Netherlands triggered a paradigm shift in flood management. The 2.3 billion Euro flood safety programme Room for the River (RftR) was launched to increase...

A programme management approach for supporting a transition to integrated flood management in the Netherlands

In the Netherlands and many other developed countries, flood management is transitioning from sectoral engineering approaches to more integrated approaches. The 2.3 billion Euro Room for the River programme plays an important role in this transition, because it is the first large scale infrastructure programme in the Netherlands that breaks with...

The identity approach for assessing socio-technical resilience to climate change: Example of flood risk management for the Island of Dordrecht

Recent EU guidance on adaptation calls for the enhancement of socio-technical resilience to climate change. However, socio-technical resilience is relatively poorly defined and this makes it difficult to apply in practice. This paper uses the concept of identity as a vehicle to advance the definition and assessment of socio-technical resilience....