Water Scarcity
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DELTARES MAGAZINE NO. 2, SEPTEMBER 2014 DUTCH LESSONS FOR THE USA NANOPARTICLES TACKLE SOIL POLLUTION TESTS FOR TSUNAMI BARRIER THE JELLYFISH ARE COMING! WATER SCARCITY: CREEPING PROBLEM HAS ENORMOUS IMPACT 2 DELTARES, SEPTEMBER 2014 3 6 ‘EACH OTHER'S LABORATORY’ DELTARES FRONT In Louisiana, Florida and California, Deltares experts are pitching in to IN BRIEF COVER combat the water. How can the Dutch At present, in 2014, approach help the Americans? DAM IN KOREA approximately 700 million An interview with Dale Morris. The Korea Institute of people in 43 countries are Construction Technology suffering from water scarcity. (KICT) has decided to use the 9 This is sometimes a passing DAM (Dike Analyse Module) problem but, increasingly, it WATER SCARCITY software package to assess is a fact of life. And it is only 6 dike strength. In South DOSSIER expected to get worse: as early Korea, there are four large as 2025, almost 2 billion people Population growth, economic growth rivers with many kilometres will be short of water. There and climate change are leading to water of dike. DAM was originally are more and more technical scarcity in more and more places around the globe. What can be done? developed by Deltares for the solutions available, but there Dutch water management is almost no awareness of agencies and it provides how urgent the need is. That fast information about dike 20 is because water scarcity is a strength which can also be creeping process that develops NATURE IN THE CITY used during emergencies. slowly over the course of many Nature-based engineering can make Following China and the decades. But waiting on the cities greener, keeping the streets United States, South Korea sidelines is no longer an option: dry and the water clean. The latest will be the third country outside the Netherlands water scarcity is just as much a developments in this field. 9 to adopt DAM. natural disaster as a tsunami, earthquake or a typhoon. The And also: GETTING TO WORK impact is enormous. If nothing is 3. Deltares in brief IN POLAND done, more and more crops will 6. Interview with Dale Morris There are problems with fail and the price of water will 9. Water scarcity dossier navigability on a number rise. Basic necessities like food 16. Infographic Green Port of sections of the Wisla, and water will be beyond the 18. How this minuscule particle can Poland's longest river. reach of large groups of people. clean up your soil In response, the Polish 20. Nature-based engineering in the city government has asked the Diseases and mortality will rise. STABILITY TESTING FOR on the rise Dutch consortium, which This means that water scarcity is 22. Testing ground: flow to pumping MISSISSIPPI DIKES includes Deltares, to look at one of the most urgent problems station optimised improving the navigability now facing society. From page 9 23. Knowledge in operation: Tsunami Barrier THINKSTOCK PHOTO: of the Wisla. Particularly onwards. 24. The jellyfish are coming! in the vicinity of Warsaw, 26. Make more of the lake 20 eltares is testing a dike rience during the development of the vessels with large draughts 28. Deltares software section of 30 miles on the Dutch Statutory Assessment Instruments cannot use the river and 29. Deltares organisation Mississippi River, looking (WTI) with failure mechanisms. These so commercial shipping at the failure mechanisms instruments are used by the Dutch is no longer possible. The of piping and macro agencies that manage primary flood consortium will develop an stability. Both have a major impact on defences to assess the strength of the integrated approach for the CREDITS Twitter Editing desk: Text: Deltares and D http://twitter.com/deltares P.O. Box 177, 2600 MH Delft, Maters & Hermsen dike stability. The pilot project is being dikes using statutory standards. They are area between Warsaw and Delta Life is published by Deltares, an independent Linkedin The Netherlands Journalistiek executed with the US Army Corps of based on research looking at the loads Gdansk, emphasising flood institute for applied research in the field of water, http://www.linkedin.com/ tel. +31 (0)88 335 8273 Design and subsurface and infrastructure. Throughout the company/217430 carmen.boersma@ layout: Engineers, the agency that manages on the flood defences and the various protection, hydrology and world, we work on smart solutions, innovations Facebook deltares.nl Maters & Hermsen the dike. A similar pilot project is being ways dikes can fail. Deltares develops the spatial planning. and applications for people, environment and https://www.facebook. A subscription is free and can Vormgeving society. Our main focus is on deltas, coastal com/ be requested or cancelled by Print: prepared for the Huaihe River in China. assessment standards for the Ministry of regions and river basins. #!/pages/Deltares/ sending an e-mail to Koninklijke BDU Deltares acquired considerable expe Infrastructure and the Environment. 154189334634001 [email protected] Grafisch Bedrijf bv For more information: www.deltares.nl ISSN: 2351-972X 4 DELTARES, SEPTEMBER 2014 5 More messages on www.deltares.nl DELTARES KNOWLEDGE Deltares is a partner in New Meadowlands is, IN BRIEF two of the six winning like the Netherlands, a consortiums that low-lying area, and so PARTNER FOR will improve storm typically Dutch solutions IMPROVED defences in New York. can be used. The safety The consortiums will approach is based on MANAGEMENT NEW YORK FLOOD be responsible for the the latest Dutch insights, ‘New Meadowlands’ with the emphasis on FOR EUROPEAN PROTECTION project near Little ‘nature-based flood Ferry in New Jersey and defence’, using nature to WATERS ‘Living with the Bay’ in improve flood defences. Nassau County on Long ‘Living with the Bay' will European waters are under pressure. IMPROVED Island. The competition implement solutions for Quality goals are not being achieved and ‘Rebuild by Design’ the Nassau County area freshwater supplies are uncertain. How was organised by the on Long Island in New can improvements be made? To answer DROUGHT American government York. The upgrading after Hurricane Sandy in of the Nassau County this question, the European MARS project FORECASTING the autumn of 2012. coastal area will also (Managing Aquatic ecosystems and New Meadowlands focus on the use of ‘soft’ water Resources under multiple Stress) FOR AFRICA will create an area infrastructure. was launched recently. measuring 80 km² that The cause of the present predicament Together with nineteen African and European will protect the New York- is known: multiple stressors. Combina New Jersey metropolitan institutes, Deltares developed a new system tions of factors such as climate change, region from future floods. for predicting meteorological, hydrological drinking water extraction, extraction for and agricultural drought in Africa. The irrigation, contamination, and falls in the DEWFORA project (Drought Early Warning availability of fresh groundwater lead to and Forecasting) was launched in 2011, a decline in the status of groundwater, recently reaching completion. Deltares streams and rivers. coordinated the project. CLIMATE CHANGE Water managers are looking for Drought has a major impact in Africa and SCALE MODEL promising ways of tackling multiple expectations are that the drought problem will AND INFRASTRUCTURE stressors. MARS was launched to worsen as a result of climate change. There What impact do new weather patterns such as extreme rainfall or extreme heat understand and predict the impact of are various drought forecasting systems in SEA SLUICE have on infrastructure? And, more importantly, will vital infrastructure remain stressors on the water system and the place in Africa but the warnings they produce intact? This is the focus of research in the European INTACT project (‘Impact of ecology. It will develop practical tools that are often too late and not always as accurate IJMUIDEN Extreme Weather on Critical Infrastructure’), which started recently. Extreme managers can use to restore stressed as they might be. In addition, they often don't weather can have a negative impact on the management and maintenance of surface waters and groundwater, and reach the intended users and therefore fail to roads, bridges and tunnels, and on user safety, and also cause economic damage support policy makers to draft and produce the required response, with all the when structures are shut down. Deltares is leading the sub-project with case studies implement water policies. harm that entails. The DEWFORA solutions looking at extreme snowfall (Finland), heat waves and drought (Spain), extreme MARS is being conducted for the will make it possible to predict drought more rainfall and landslides (Italy), and flooding and excess water (Ireland and the European Commission and it will take reliably and see it coming earlier. This will Deltares has been building a scale Netherlands). The Dutch case focuses on the harbour of Rotterdam and the links four years. Deltares will be working allow the people involved to take targeted model of the new sea sluice in IJmuiden with the hinterland by road, waterways, railways and pipelines. Weather and together with twentythree other action faster. in recent months for Rijkswaterstaat. impact models are being used to study the effect of the weather on infrastructure. research institutes. Marin supplied the ship model. The scale model will be used to study the forces on the sluice and the effect of salt and fresh water. The scale model, COLOMBIA PREPARES FOR including the sluice chamber and the entrances, is approximately 56 metres CLIMATE CHANGE long in total and 20 metres wide. The new sea sluice in IJmuiden will be Colombia wants to prepare its water system properly for climate change in the future and it is working one of the largest in the world, with on a National Adaptation Plan. It describes the steps that need to be taken to ensure that the water chambers more than 500 metres long system can cope adequately with the consequences of climate change such as extreme rainfall.