Understanding Levee Failures from Historical and Satellite Observations

Flood defense systems are critical in protecting against catastrophic events which often lead to significant damage, fatalities or substantial socio-economic and environmental impact. Even though levees form a significant part of the existing flood defense systems, there is a limited knowledge of the different levee behavior processes and the...

Dijkinspecties vanuit de ruimte: droom of werkelijkheid?

We hebben in Nederland ongeveer 20.000 km waterkeringen en het is kostbaar en tijdrovend om deze regelmatig fysiek te inspecteren. Met radarsatellieten wordt deformatie op meer plekken, vaker, en nauwkeuriger gemeten. Hierdoor kan het gedrag van keringen continu worden gemonitord en kan afwijkend gedrag vroegtijdig worden gedetecteerd. Deze...

Sub-seasonal Levee Deformation Observed Using Satellite Radar Interferometry to Enhance Flood Protection

Levees are critical in providing protection against catastrophic flood events, and thus require continuous monitoring. Current levee inspection methods rely on limited information obtained by visual inspection, resulting in infrequent, localized, mostly qualitative and subjective assessments. This hampers the timely detection of problematic...

Towards an International Levee Performance Database (ILPD) and Its Use for Macro-Scale Analysis of Levee Breaches and Failures

Understanding levee failures can be significantly improved by analysing historical failures, experiments and performance observations. Individual efforts have been undertaken to document flood defence failures but no systematically gathered large scale, open access dataset is currently available for thorough scientific research. Here, we...

Applicability of satellite radar imaging to monitor the conditions of levees

Levees are critical systems in safeguarding an area against catastrophic flooding events with potential fatalities and economic losses. Current monitoring methods of levees highly rely on expert judgement, resulting in infrequent and subjective assessments of their status. Satellite radar imaging, in particular using interferometry (InSAR),...

Satellietdeformatiemetingen Eemdijk: Technisch Report

Satellietradarinterferometrie (InSAR) maakt het mogelijk om voor bepaalde objecten op het aardoppervlak deformaties op mm niveau te meten. De techniek wordt onder andere toegepast voor het monitoren van de stabiliteit van verschillende typen infrastructuur, zoals wegen en spoorwegen. De voordelen van satellietradarinterferometrie zijn dat grote...

Preliminary Results of the Safelevee Project

Detection and Analysis of Weak Spots in Levees Based on Satellite Radar Interferometry

On the importance of analyzing flood defense failures

Flood defense failures are rare events but when they do occur lead to significant amounts of damage. The defenses are usually designed for rather low-frequency hydraulic loading and as such typically at least high enough to prevent overflow. When they fail, flood defenses like levees built with modern design codes usually either fail due to wave...