News archive

Climate change is putting water shortages and flooding front and centre. Over the past two years, Deltares has been working with Wageningen University and Research (WUR), two water authorities and private bodies on the development of an integrated platform that can be used to monitor data about water availability at the level of individual plots of land, while also taking weather forecasts into account. The aim is to give growers the opportunity to make better decisions, for example about irrigation.

Major roads in the Alps are vulnerable to flooding from rivers. That is the conclusion of a study by Deltares and Amsterdam VU-University that was published this week. Among other things, it identified high-risk locations of this kind. The researchers used a new technique to calculate in very fine detail the flood risks for every road in Europe, from major motorways to urban alleyways. Investment banks and national road authorities can now identify the weakest links in the road network and improve the climate resilience of the network.

The current silt dynamics in the Wadden Sea are markedly influenced by human activities and interventions, such as the dredging of waterways and the use of silt for land reclamation. In this context, ‘silt’ is taken to mean sediment with a grain size of less than 63 micrometres. For the trilateral Wadden Sea (the overall Wadden Sea area shared by the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark) there is a lack of solid insight into silt management. This inspired the Wadden Academy and Programme towards a Rich Wadden Sea (PRW) to ask Deltares to launch a study into this. Where does the silt come from, what happens to it in the Wadden Sea and what are the potential consequences of human intervention? The report Where Mud Matters is now complete. It provides the first silt balance assessment for the trilateral Wadden Sea. The report was presented to Bernd Scherer, chair of the Trilateral Programming Committee on Wadden Sea Research, during the 2nd Sediment Solutions webinar.

After dredging operations, a lot of sand and silt is lost from the Rhine-Meuse estuary into the sea or into depots. In order to retain the dredged sand and silt in the natural system of the Rhine-Meuse estuary for as long as possible, a number of major players in this field have got together in the Rhine Estuary Sediment Testing Ground initiative. A more efficient use of dredged sand or silt is good for the environment and the safety of the delta.

A more accurate assessment of the economic impact of subsidence is needed to decide whether intervention is required and what form that intervention should take. Until now, there has been no consistent framework for assessing the economic costs of subsidence. Kok and Costa propose a standardised framework which provides a sound basis for comparable and consistent decision-making about subsidence risk: how big is the problem, what are the key impacted areas and sectors? This information can be used to weigh the benefits of expected interventions against their costs.

We are proud to launch the new portal for the River Basin Planning and Management software RIBASIM (River Basin Simulation Model).

The general approach to contaminated soil is “isolate and monitor”. Because removing the soil is often not an option, either because of the depth of the pollution or other causes. In those cases, biodegradation by “toxophile” bacteria can be a solution. Johan van Leeuwen wondered about the exact conditions in which specific substances are degraded and whether we can encourage the bacteria to do this more efficiently. His research shows that remediation with bacteria can be better and faster than previously thought. “For example by controlling the nitrate levels in the soil.” He will defend his doctorate thesis at Utrecht University on 17 February.