News

Stay informed of all the latest Deltares developments in the field of water and subsurface.

  1. Saint-Louis, caught between two threats

    Deltares is working on two projects in Saint-Louis, Senegal, to protect the population against flooding from the Sénégal River and coastal erosion by the sea. “The problems are big, but we have collected a lot of data to arrive at the best solutions,” says Pieter Koen Tonnon, senior advisor at Deltares. Saint-Louis is caught between two threats. The coastal town in northern Senegal is located on a sand spit at the mouth of the Sénégal River, where high river levels cause flooding during the wet season. At the same time, the city borders on the sea, which means that storms and waves also cause flooding and coastal erosion on the narrow, vulnerable coast where many people live.

    12 July 2021

  2. New maps of foundation risk at neighbourhood level in the Climate Impact Atlas

    Low groundwater levels caused by drought and land subsidence may result in damage to foundations. New maps in the Climate Impact Atlas now provide a clearer picture of the local risk of damage to wooden pile foundations (pile rot) and the differential settlement of buildings on steel foundations.

    28 June 2021

  3. Updated land subsidence maps show the effects of climate change and water level management

    Nine million Dutch people live or work in areas where the land is subsiding. The extent of subsidence in the future depends mainly on the amount of gas and salt extraction, how much the climate warms up and on the water level policy in place. The new maps in the Climate Effect Atlas for forecasting land subsidence provide an insight into the extent of subsidence in the Netherlands until 2100. Water level policy - fixing the water level as opposed to indexing it - and climate change have been included in a high and a low scenario.

    23 June 2021

  4. Bijschrift Rijkswaterstaat ruimte voor de rivier

    Coastal retreat as a serious option to adapt to sea-level rise

    Sea-level rise is expected to have severe consequences. To adapt to sea-level rise a range of options exists: protection, accommodation, coastal advance and retreat. So far, retreat has been mostly used post hoc, rather than preemptively. Researchers from Deltares, Utrecht University, New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute at Victoria University of Wellington, and Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations demonstrate in the scientific journal Science how exploring pathways to managed retreat adds value in the context of the accelerating and long-term commitment to SLR. They argue that there is an urgent need to keep coastal retreat on the table as an option to adapt to sea-level rise.

    17 June 2021

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    From source to sea transport and fate of plastic waste Indonesia

    The World Bank has published a Deltares-led study estimating plastic waste discharges from land-based sources in Indonesia. In this study, we provide the first Indonesia-wide assessment integrating local waste data with actual hydrological conditions to tell the story of how local waste handling practices contribute to marine plastic pollution.

    8 June 2021

  6. Global Water Watch

    Societies and economies are under threat because of the unreliability of per capita water resources due to climate change, non-sustainable use and political instability. Worldwide water information is essential to address this fundamental challenge. To stimulate access to water information, the Dutch research institute Deltares has – with its partners World Resources Institute (WRI) and World Wide Fund (WWF) – received financial support from Google.org for the development of an app containing world-wide, high-resolution, near-real-time, water data.

    13 April 2021

  7. Global map shows 19 percent of global population may face a high probability of subsidence

    A new global map shows that land subsidence as a result of the depletion of our groundwater resources is a global anthropogenic hazard that produces relevant environmental, social and economic impacts. According to the researchers which published the map in Science 19 percent of the global population and 12 percent of the global gross domestic product may face a high probability of subsidence.

    14 January 2021