M. van Koningsveld

Living with sea-level rise and climate change: a case study of the Netherlands

Abstract Based on historical hindsight, this paper shows that sea-level rise has played a fundamental role in the development of the low-lying environment of the Netherlands. It was beneficial in morphological terms during the mid-Holocene, but from Roman times, it has been a threat to the coastal zone evolution and human habitation. Collective human response started to play a role in coastal evolution as early as the ninth century, while its influence started to become a major factor during the nineteenth and twentieth century. Throughout its history, Dutch society has always been receptive to new technologies, approaches, and policies in its dealings with the many water-related challenges. The success of concerted human response explains why the water boards were successful as the first democratic institutions in the Netherlands. Development of technology and increasing financial means (the Dutch Golden Age) gave rise to increasingly viable flood abatement measures and reclamation projects, which took place on increasingly larger scales. This culminated in large-scale works such as the closure of the Zuiderzee and the Delta Project in the twentieth century. During this project, a turning point in thinking emerged; while flood protection remained a top priority, human interventions were considered in a broader, more holistic context with natural values being weighed against socioeconomic interests. In the face of the challenges of the twenty-first century, policy and management approaches as well as science and technology approaches need to be adapted further in accordance to the principles of working with nature in a trans-disciplinary way. The success of this adaptation will to a large extent determine the viability of the Dutch society as a whole.

Sustainable Coastal Policy Developments in The Netherlands. A Systematic Approach Revealed

Abstract Policy development is a dynamic and cyclic process characterised by successive stages of development, implementation and evaluation. Throughout this process, interaction between science and coastal management plays an important role. An illustration is given in this paper, based on an analysis of the history of coastal policy in the Netherlands over the last two decades. Evaluation in 1995 of the coastal policy of Dynamic Preservation, developed during the late 80s and implemented in 1990, led to a redefinition in 2000. Implementation in 2001, of a sustainable coastal policy in the Netherlands with both a small- and a large-scale approach, is the result. The analysis in this paper indicates that the successful development and implementation of coastal policy in the Netherlands, is related to the use of a systematic ‘frame of reference’; characteristics are explicit definitions of both strategic and operational objectives applied in a 4-step decision recipe of (1) a quantitative state concept, (2) a bench marking procedure, (3) a procedure for CZM measures or intervention and (4) an evaluation procedure. Applications of this frame of reference show its high potential to better integrate coastal science and coastal policy and -management and to stimulate co-operation.

OpenEarth : Using Google Earth as outreach for NCK's data

In 2003 various projects at Deltares and the TU-Delft merged their toolboxes for marine and coastal science and engineering into one toolbox, culminating in 2008 in an open source release, known as OpenEarthTools (OET). OpenEarth adopts the wikipedia approach to growth: web 2.0 crowd sourcing. All users are given full write access to help improve the collection. Quality is assured by version control, tracking all changes. OpenEarth started as a social experiment to investigate whether crowd sourcing was possible in our community of marine and coastal researchers. The answer is yes: over 1000 users registered, now enjoying over 5000 contributions from over 100 contributors. The most important asset is a general toolbox to plot any data type in Google Earth. With this toolbox it has become very easy for marine and coastal experts to disseminate their data via Google Earth. It enables the NCK community to make its data available to end-users and the general public with only little effort. They can now consume our data as simple as watching YouTube: DataTube. In this paper it is shown that OpenEarth has added important value by analyzing a wide range of marine and coastal data types from NCK simultaneously in Google Earth. To match the traditional gap between specialist knowledge and end users, Google Earth is shown to be a very powerful tool. The possibilities for outreach by NCK are manifold.

Morphological impact of a storm can be predicted three days ahead

People living behind coastal dunes depend on the strength and resilience of dunes for their safety. Forecasts of hydrodynamic conditions and morphological change on a timescale of several days can provide essential information to protect lives and property. In order for forecasts to protect they need be relevant, accurate, provide lead time, and information on confidence. Here we show how confident one can be in morphological predictions of several days ahead. The question is answered by assessing the forecast skill as a function of lead time. The study site in the town of Egmond, the Netherlands, where people depend on the dunes for their safety, is used because it is such a rich data source, with a history of forecasts, tide gauges and bathymetry measurements collected by video cameras. Even though the forecasts are on a local scale, the methods are generally applicable. It is shown that the intertidal beach volume change can be predicted up to three days ahead.

LINKING COASTAL EVOLUTION AND SUPER STORM DUNE EROSION FORECASTS

To assess the long-term safety of a dune-protected coastal area, models are needed for forecasting both long-term coastal evolution and dune erosion due to the occurrence of a super storm. In long-term model forecasts, however, information on dune shape is lost. Explorative calculations show that the output of the event-scale dune erosion model is quite sensitive to the dune height. For a given super storm, a higher dune leads to a larger forecasted erosion volume, but to a less land inward position of the erosion line (the line that indicates how far erosion is expected to reach land inward). Clearly, a solution should be found for adding information on realistic dune shapes to the long-term coastal evolution forecast. EOF decomposition of observed dune profiles provides simple but realistic dune shape functions that could be used to redistribute forecasted dune volumes into realistic dune shapes.