Securing fresh water supply on the Dutch Caribbean islands, former colonial overseas territories of The Netherlands from the 17th century, always has been, and still is, a challenge. Between 1904 and 1915 the cartographers Werbata and Jonckheer drew the first topographical maps of the islands. Detailed data was needed for the (re-)development of fresh water management system based on rainwater harvesting. The re-development of this decentralized water system as envisioned by governor De Jong van Beek en Donk was stopped short due to the regions oil boom. The water intense oil industry turned to groundwater exploitation and seawater desalination. Post oil Dutch Caribbean communities still rely predominantly on energy intensive desalination plants for their water supply. The destructions of Hurricane Irma on Sint Maarten in 2017 exposed the vulnerability of this system. Decentralized fresh water management systems enabling island communities to become more self-sustaining in the face of climate change and disaster are needed. In the field of water management there is growing acknowledgement that nature based solutions (NBS) offer an “alternative approach to increasingly relying on engineering solutions”. Heritage inspired design and solutions, learning from vernacular and historical systems and practices, has the potential to add to the body of knowledge, possible strategies and solutions to manage fresh water resources sustainably and cope with the consequences of climate change. This paper therefor investigates the development of fresh water management systems and strategies in the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao during colonial rule. The Werbata-Jonckheer maps are an important source in this investigation for the development of a first landscape typomorphological overview of fresh water supply systems.@en

The supervision of water systems in many countries is centralised and taken over from local water management collectives of ‘water workers’ by governmental or other water management institutions. Communities are literally and figuratively cut-off from ‘their’ water systems, due to the increase of urbanisation and industrialisation. On account of water management, humankind changed from communities of actively engaged water workers into passive users. In so doing, crucial knowledge about how communities created, maintained, and expanded ‘living water systems’, such as rice terraces, low-pasture systems, polders, floating-gardens, brooks-mill, and tidal systems, is rapidly diminishing. Revealing stories (oral accounts) of water workers generate insights and understanding of forgotten aspects of the landscape. They hold information on how to engage with water in a more holistic way, strategies that might help in facing today’s challenges. The world in general, but planners, spatial designers, and water managers working with water, in particular, have so far taken little account of these stories. Without documenting stories that are about the dynamic interaction between people and landscape, valuable knowledge has disappeared and continues to do so. To help to overcome this knowledge gap, to learn from the past, the Visual Water Biography (VWB) is developed. The novel method is based on the Delft layer approach in which the spatial relationship of a design and its topography is studied, and developed by many authors from the faculty of landscape architecture at TU Delft in combination with the landscape biography approach. The Visual Water Biography visualises and maps: 1) knowledge and 2) engagement of water workers by focusing on 3) circular and 4) cyclical processes that are descended in the landscape. The method developed for spatial planners, researchers, and designers explicitly allows for multi-disciplinary engagement with water workers, water professionals, people from other disciplines such as historians and ecologists, and the general public. The added value of the VWB method is shown by the case of the Dutch Sprengen and Brooks system, a water system that is well documented in terms of landscape biography but less understood as a living water system.@en

Cities worldwide currently face freshwater shortages. Forecasts predict that demand will outstrip naturally renewable and available water supplies by 40% by 2030. This poses a serious threat to livability in cities and urban areas that are already struggling with water-related issues like floods and land subsidence. Water insecurity, in particular, now intensified by climate change, calls for integrated and creative solutions. The Dutch heritage in freshwater management, sometimes overlooked and undervalued due to its utilitarian and often modest orientation, is able to provide knowledge and inspiration toward developing water-secure, water-sensitive cities. Three lessons can be learned from Dutch water supply heritage. First, the quest for clean drinking water has sometimes driven the development of valuable urban greenscapes, waterscapes, and nature and landscape conservation areas. Second, those who initiated and managed water-related innovations were often private and commercial parties which collaborated with public entities. Third, although Dutch water supply heritage has become invisible or is not recognized, it embodies valuable systems and practices, particularly with regard to the multisource water supply, private and collective rainwater harvesting, that today could benefit both water supply and wastewater systems. Reducing the need for clean drinking water, generating less storm water runoff, needs to be done while engaging the public in building water-sensitive, safe cities. @en