Feasibility of Pumped Hydro Energy Storage in a River Cascade: Case Study of the Meuse

The Meuse river in the Netherlands has been made navigable by the construction of a cascade of seven low head weirs. Because of environmental regulations, hydropower facilities exist at only two weirs. This implies the full hydropower potential of the Meuse cascade is not utilized. By using pump-turbines the river sections upstream of the weirs...

Klimaatadaptatie in het rivierengebied: Een geo-ecologisch perspectief.

Door klimaatverandering verandert het afvoerregime van onze grote rivieren. Hoogwaters worden hoger en frequenter, laagwaters lager en langduriger. Hoe we daarop reageren hangt af van hoe we klimaatverandering zien: als opgave, of als kans om onvolkomenheden aan te pakken. In dit artikel presenteren we aanzetten voor een meer geo-ecologisch...

Room for Rivers: Risk Reduction by Enhancing the Flood Conveyance Capacity of The Netherlands’ Large Rivers

The Netherlands has just finished implementing the Room for the Rivers program along the Rhine and Meuse Rivers in response to increasing river discharges. Recently, making more room for the river is, however, being challenged for future application because the flood defenses are assessed to be too weak and will need reinforcement anyway. To be...

Robust river systems: on assessing the sensitivity of embanked rivers to discharge uncertainties, exemplified for the Netherlands' main rivers

There is increasing attention for the robustness of systems, in view of more frequent and more extreme weather events. Calls to increase a system's robustness are usually motivated by the resulting reduced sensitivity to extreme events and uncertainties about their probability of occurrence. The concept has been elaborated for flood risk systems...

An integrated approach to flood risk management and spatial quality for a Netherlands’ river polder area

Influence of a storm surge barrier’s operation on the flood frequency in the Rhine Delta area

The Rhine River Delta is crucial to the Dutch economy. The Maeslant barrier was built in 1997 to protect the Rhine estuary, with the city and port of Rotterdam, from storm surges. This research takes a simple approach to quantify the influence of the Maeslant storm surge barrier on design water levels behind the barrier. The dikes in the area...