Water safety at national and regional level

Water safety has always been high on the agenda in the low-lying country of the Netherlands. Over the past few centuries a good hydraulic engineering infrastructure and an efficient water management system have been developed to protect our country from high tides. Nevertheless, climate change and the associated accelerated rise in sea level, extreme rainfall in the summer months and higher water discharge from the rivers Rhine and Meuse, are giving rise to new tasks to protect us from high water. The second Delta Committee put forward several recommendations in 2008 for protecting the Netherlands from high tides and for adapting to the effects of climate change in terms of water management at regional and national level.

We are faced with the major challenge of adapting our densely populated and low-lying country to the (partly uncertain) effects of climate change and dealing with the risks involved. Diverse research programmes on water safety are currently in progress. Knowledge for Climate intends to focus primarily on the development of additional and more in-depth knowledge regarding adaptation measures, based on topics formulated by the hotspots. Measures to be taken must also be adequately sustainable and robust in order to offer resistance to the uncertainty of anticipated climate effects. Options are limited in the Netherlands, a country which is densely populated and densely built. Adaptation measures are therefore closely interwoven with the spatial organisation and specific circumstances of the individual locations, whose interests and functions will need to be taken into account. We must search for sustainable and location specific measures that focus on combining 'blue', 'green' and 'red' functions. For instance, natural processes can be utilised to augment water safety.

Knowledge development within this theme focuses on prospects for action, with a particular emphasis on developing a deeper understanding of the concept of robustness, in terms of function, environmental engineering, economics and society.

Key questions

• Which adaptation measures regarding water safety are sufficiently robust to offer resistance to a whole range of potential climate change effects?
• What are the possibilities of combining the water safety function of new types of climate-robust dikes (including wider dikes) with other functions (nature, housing, recreation, infrastructure, etc.)
• What opportunities are offered by natural climate buffers in terms of water safety?
• What are the possibilities and limitations of building flexible dams?
• How effective are these prospects for action in relation to the regional and national safety risks? To what extent can measures to limit the consequences contribute to reducing the risks?
• What can the Netherlands as a country learn from the way in which other nations are dealing with these problems?

A Consortium on Climate-proof flood risk management has been formed in 2010. The main aim of this consortium is to perform an in-depth interdisciplinary assessment of these innovative types of measures. The Consortium research programme will:

• develop methods for assessing

1. the effectiveness of technical measures and policy instruments to reduce flood risks
2. the implications of their implementation for urban and countryside environments
3. the robustness (resilience and resistance) of comprehensive FRM strategies in view of uncertainty about climate change

• provide guidelines for the design of long-term FRM alternatives and individual measures based on effectiveness (flood risk reduction), robustness and their contribution to the development of entire regions (multi-functional use, natural values and spatial quality)

View the list with CcSP and KfC projects with regard to this Research theme.