Climate-induced conflict? The role of meteorological drought indicators for communal conflict prediction in North-Western Kenya

Recent Conflict Early Warning Systems have found little evidence of predictive power of drought indicators for conflict prediction. However, this may result from the context-specificity of the drought-conflict relationship, as stressed in the more recent climate-conflict literature.<br/><br/>The present thesis assesses the local role of...

Applicability of a conceptual tool in quantifying the effectiveness of Nature-Based Solutions in tropical urban flood mitigation: A case study in Paramaribo, Suriname

This thesis aims to assess the applicability of the CRCTool for evaluating the effectiveness of NBS for mitigating tropical urban floods in the city center of Paramaribo. Assumptions related to urban flood mitigation were tested, a sensitivity analysis for the most sensitive parameters was performed, and the hydrological behaviour of groundwater...

Hydropower Potential in Indonesia: Assessment of theoretical, technical and economic potential of hydropower

Indonesia has a severe problem of fossil fuel dependency, making it become one the world’s larger carbon emission contributor. At the same time, the growing population will increase the energy demand in the future. Thus, in order to meet the energy demand and decrease the carbon emission, the government together with PLN as the state electricity...

Nowcasting of Extreme Rainfall in Dutch Cities

Extreme rainfall brings substantial threats to lives, infrastructure, and the economy in cities. Radar rainfall nowcasting was proven able to provide forecasts up to 2 to 3 hours in advance on a catchment scale. However, an extensive evaluation of nowcasting skills for urban areas has not been performed yet. In this study, we selected 80 extreme...

Consolidating Gauge, Weather Radar and GPM DPR Level 2A Observations of High-intensity Rainfall Events in the Netherlands

The Dual-Frequency Precipitation Radar on board the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission core satellite has been providing precipitation products across the globe for over 6 years, thereby even supplying precipitation estimates for areas on Earth where surface-based precipitation measurements are not possible, like in remote regions,...

Bias Correction of Climate Simulations to assess Climate Change Impacts on Low Flows in the Rhine River

Regional climate model (RCMs) simulations are used in hydrological (climate-change) impact assessment studies. However, RCMs exhibit noticeable deviation from observation, and can show large variation in ensemble projections (biases). The objective of this study is twofold, first to assess the robustness of two high-skill bias-correction methods...

Nowcasting Rainfall in Sri Lanka using Commercial Microwave Links

Disasters like inland floods and landslides are a cause of extreme rainfall. To increase the time to take early measures against such disasters it is of great importance to have access to accurate prediction of the rainfall. For the prediction of floods, Quantitative Precipitation Forecasts (QPFs) are used as input for hydrologic models....

Are rain gauges in the right place?

Rain gauges are a powerful tool to measure rain entering a watershed. When water flow through a watershed is modeled, these rainfall measurements are used as inputs. Hydrological models have become increasingly complex as they more accurately represent the physical processes occurring. This is mostly done by increasing the spatial and temporal...

Limiting land subsidence of an island polder with a clay - peat subsurface: How can land subsidence be limited in a clay - peat polder through the implementation of water management practices in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve (ground)water quality and stimulate biodiversity?

For hundreds of years, ditch water levels in Dutch agricultural peatlands have been lowered to increase the loading capacity of farming parcels. This lowering results in groundwater levels in the middle of the parcels that fall a few decimeters under the ditch levels. When the groundwater level in a peat soil is lowered, newly uncovered peat is...

Retention of Rhine water in the Rijnstrangen to mitigate drought

Over the last years the Netherlands has often had to deal with droughts and water shortages during summer. This problem is caused by long periods without rain but with high evaporation rates and is enhanced by groundwater extraction for drinking water. Due to climate change, these droughts are expected to occur more often and become more severe....