Economic optimization of coastal flood defence systems including storm surge barrier closure reliability

Storm surge barriers are large movable hydraulic structures which close during a storm surge to prevent coastal floods. In the regions they protect, a failure to close the barrier is often the most likely cause for a catastrophic flood. Nevertheless, flood risk assessments usually only focus on raising flood defences behind the barrier....

Paving the way for the integration of synthesis, assessment, and design tools within an ontological framework

The constant development of new alternatives to treat waste aids in closing material loops towards the circular economy and improving sustainability through the use of new renewable materials and energy. This fact leads to the increasing need for decision-making tools for process synthesis and assessment, which can be addressed with an...

Techno-economic performance optimization of hydrothermal doublet systems: Application to the Al Wajh basin, Western Saudi Arabia

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has vast geothermal energy resources. When developed, these markedly strengthen the country's goals of achieving a carbon-neutral economy. To demonstrate the feasibility and techno-economic performance of small-scale, hydrothermal well doublet systems for direct use in KSA, we perform reservoir and wellbore...

Screening flood adaptation measures framework

To reduce the flood risk in areas prone to flooding, possible adaptation measures must be investigated. In this thesis a Python-based framework has been developed that can screen flood adaptation measures as an alternative to the existing analytical method of Royal HaskoningDHV. The framework is limited to the costs and effects on the economic...

Energy analytics for supporting built environment decarbonisation

The identification of techno-economically feasible decarbonisation paths and sustainability transitions for the built environment is a necessary task for research today and building stock renovation processes can act in synergy with innovative economic and technological development paradigms to achieve different types of benefits such as...

Economic optimization of coastal flood defense systems

Coastal flood defense systems can consist of multiple lines of defense. In case of a system with a front and a rear defense (e.g. a storm surge barrier and levees), the front defense can improve the reliability of the rear defense by reducing the load on this rear defense. This paper develops a framework in order to assess whether including...

Optimization of flood risk reduction through multiple lines of defence

loods can have a huge impact on the regions they affect. The impact of these disasters can be reduced with a flood risk management system. Flood-prone regions often require a combination of interventions to reduce the risk to an acceptable level. The amount of risk reduction provided by various interventions can be quantified using probabilistic...

Economic optimization of breakwaters - Case study: Maintenance of Port of Constantza’s Northern Breakwater

This report presents the results of an Additional MSc Thesis as part of the Master Programme of Hydraulic Engineering from the Delft University of Technology Civil Engineering and Geosciences Faculty. The objective of this additional graduation work is to provide a better insight on economical optimization of breakwaters. Information about the...

RAMSSHEEP analysis: A tool for risk-driven maintenance. Applied for primary flood defence systems in the Netherlands

Introduction Floods are a threat to millions of people who live in lowlands like the Netherlands. Therefore the Dutch government has been given re-quirements for primary flood defence systems like dikes. The current condition of most of these dikes does not fulfill to these requirements based on flood risk analyses of RWS. The most logical step...

Economic optimal design of vertical breakwaters

In Europe the interest in and the importance of vertical breakwaters is growing. A central point is the optimal geometry, e.g. the width and height of the breakwater caisson chosen such that the total costs over the lifetime of the structure are minimized. Probabilistic design tools provide several methods to determine the probability of failure...

Economical optimization of the maintenance of a river bed protection construction

This example of optimizing the maintenance by minimizing the sum of the present values of the tisk and the costs of repair in a certain plan peliod is a part of a study done by the author by order of the Delft University of Technology. In this study also a classification of ageing models and a definition of the usefulness of inspection is given....