When Disaster Flows examines how centuries of engineering the Rhine - Meuse delta have shaped the Rijnmond region an area that has long been central to the Netherlands’ economic vitality and cultural identity. Despite its scale, with a river basin extending over 185,260 km² across Northwestern Europe (Copernicus, 2011), the delta’s natural dynamics have been progressively constrained in favor of human safety, port expansion, and industrial development. This heavy reliance on engineered defenses has overshadowed the ecological functions that once sustained the landscape and moderated flood risks.
This research seeks to rediscover and reintegrate the delta’s natural logic as a fundamental strategy for addressing intensifying climate impacts and growing uncertainty. Through a systems-thinking approach, the study analyses the Rijnmond region using methods such as the DPSIR framework and Adaptive Pathway Planning. These tools enable a comprehensive understanding of environmental pressures, socio-spatial vulnerabilities, and long-term adaptation trajectories, ultimately proposing a renewed delta regime that aligns natural processes with future resilience.

Currently, the Southwestern Delta is ill. The inability to produce its essential ecosystem services hinders the Delta from being healthy. Systems that make the Delta economy prosper are the main reasons for this obstruction. If current hazards like salinisation, soil depletion, and nitrogen pollution continue; the livelihood of the peri-urban Delta communities will be under threat. In contrast, the direct relation to the Delta makes them a potential stepping stone for change.

The main question: ‘How can local peri-urban communities be the base of the just transition towards a healthy Delta, which restores the production of ecosystem services and improves the climate resilience of the Delta?’ forms the foundation of this research. This research aims to explore the potential of communities as the missing link in the just transition towards a healthy Delta.

By creating a vision and designing its strategy, the Delta area will be able to produce its ecosystem services from 2050 on. The combination of environmental assessments, mapping and spatial analysis, stakeholder engagement, a SWOT matrix, the development of action perspectives through scenario planning, and a policy review provides the base for a vision towards a healthy Delta. This vision is translated into a strategy where a design catalogue, community engagement approach, and a knowledge network bring everything together in the spatialisation of three zoom-in areas: Schouwen-Duivenland, Oesterdijk, and Haringvliet.

Through education and recognition, the awareness of the Delta communities will rise which will motivate them to be part of the urgent transition towards a healthy Delta. Field labs and knowledge centres stimulate cooperation and sharing of knowledge. The ecosystem can be restored through the collaboration of the communities with other stakeholders. The combination of ecosystem-based adaptation, knowledge networks, and the borderless approach creates a regenerative and resilient Delta that serves as an example to other estuaries in the world.