Towards Improved Flood Defences: Five Years of All-Risk Research into the New Safety Standards

Without our dikes and dunes, 60% of the Netherlands would flood on a regular basis. This area is home to 9 million people. The latest<br/>report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, February 2022) underlines the importance of reinforcing water safety. Sea levels are rising and extreme weather is becoming increasingly common....

The Influence of Infragravity Waves on Overtopping at Coastal Structures with Shallow Foreshores

Coastal communities across the globe are often protected by structures, such as seawalls, levees or dikes, which allow only a safe volume of water to pass over or “overtop” them due to wave action during storms. The area seaward of these structures is often characterised by shallow, gently sloping beds referred to as foreshores.<br/>As storm...

Developments in the management of flood defences and hydraulic infrastructure in the Netherlands

This article highlights recent developments in flood risk management in the Netherlands and presents approaches for reliability analysis and asset management for flood defences and hydraulic infrastructure. The functioning of this infrastructure is of great importance for the country as large parts of it are prone to flooding. Based on a...

Internal erosion in dams and dikes: a comparison: (Paper and Abstract)

Dams and dikes are both water-retaining earth embankments. These are vulnerable to internal erosion but specific differences lead to varying vulnerabilities to different types of internal erosion: • Dams are usually zoned, with potential filtering capability to arrest piping if it is initiated, while dikes are more commonly unzoned and incapable...

A method to calculate the probability of dike failure due to wave overtopping, including the infragravity waves and morphological changes

In this thesis, a method was developed, with which the infragravity waves and morphological changes of a sandy foreshore are included in the calculation of the probability of dike failure due to wave overtopping. Constructing a natural foreshore in front of the dike can be an attractive and innovative method to decrease the failure probability....

Flood Safety on Dikes with Wind Turbines

Many governments want to realize wind power, because it is a technology that promotes sustainable energy. That is why there is need for locations for wind farms (groups of wind turbines). Dikes are good locations for wind farms, because of favourable wind conditions, the absence of cultivation and the presence of road infrastructure. However,...

Application of Fragility Curves in Operational Flood Risk Assessment

The aim of this article is to present and discuss fragility curves that were derived for numerous dikes in the Netherlands within the Dike Data Service Centre (DDSC) initiative. A fragility curve of a dike is a mapping from the set of loads, acting on the dike, to the set of conditional dike failure probabilities. The DDSC is a platform around a...

A breakthrough with multifunctional unbreachable dykes: A case study analysis to enable implementation of multifunctional unbreachable dykes to increase cost-effectiveness of Dutch flood protection

The Netherlands is not well protected against flooding and limited budget it available for improvements. Therefore, this research investigates in what way the cost-effectiveness of Dutch flood protection can be improved with the use of multifunctional unbreachable dykes. The multifunctional unbreachable dyke, a dyke combined with additional user...

Protecting St. Bernard Parish, New Orleans: Revision of the coastal defence zone

This document is the final report of a Master thesis research. The research was executed as cooperation between Delft University of Technology, ARCADIS and ComCoast as part of The Road and Hydraulic Engineering Institute of the Directorate-General of Public Works and Water management (RWS DWW). In this report, the hurricane defence system of St....

Six out-of-the-box ideas for flood prevention

It is now accepted that the combination of more intense rainfall, poor planning of built-up areas, rising sea levels, coastal erosion and, in particular, higher storm surges pose a real threat to the UK and many other countries. At a meeting at the Institution of Civil Engineers held on 7 July 2003, the Government Chief Scientist Professor David...

Historische analyse van de gevolgen van overstromingen in Nederland: Een globale schatting van de situatie rond 1950, 1975 en 2005

Audit van PC-toets

Development of Hurricane flood protection for Texas City, Texas

The purpose of this paper is to present the hydraulic problems relating to the computation of hurricane surge, hurricane waves, runup of the waves for providing hurricane flood protection at Texas City, Texas, as well as the effects of rainfall upon the protected area during periods of normal and high tides. The problems of providing protection...