DIKE ENGINEERING - Introduction to Soft Soil Geotechnique: Content, Context and Application - page 294

Under current prediction of 0.45 m in sea level rise by the end of the 21 st century
as forecast by the IPCC-report, global delta flooding could increase by 50 percent.
Hurricane Katrina may be an illustrative example, but flooding in the Asian deltas
of Irrawaddy in Myanmar and the Ganges-Brahmaputra in India and Bangladesh,
and the earthquake invoked tsunamis that recently struck Thailand, Indonesia and
Japan have claimed thousands of lives. Similar disasters could occur in the Pearl
River delta in China and the Mekong River delta in Vietnam, where thousands of
square miles are below sea level and the regions are hit by periodic typhoons.
From a geotechnical point of view, a contribution can come from smart dike and
coastal engineering, both in a proper context and with proper knowledge
management. How this is organised in the Rhine delta is explained.
Figure 17.1b Global flooding in 2003 (black areas with large damage and casualties);
annual recording by Dartmouth Flood Observatory
The Rhine delta
The Rhine delta hosts the Netherlands, which for a large part was created during
the last millennium by land cultivation, by flood protection against sea and rivers
and permanent water drainage from lowland and polder areas. Some large cities
developed, including an intricate infrastructure of roads, railways, waterways and
pipelines for sewerage, gas, and water and for underground transport. The main
ports for shipping in Rotterdam and air transport in Amsterdam are a cradle for
international industry and commerce. The protection of commercial and social
values in the lowland demands a continuous engineering effort. Tens of thousands
of kilometres of sea dikes, river dikes and canal embankments, numerous sluices,
bridges, harbours, tunnels, dams and closures and sophisticated monitoring and
control systems form the backbone of the lowland flood protection. The
engineering skill could develop during centuries within a special legislative, social
and political frame. The expertise, the backbone of delta technology, has now
settled in a wide range of laws, guidelines, handbooks and codes.
At present new developments are required meeting the demands of the society of
today. Demands related to multiple functioning and integral values. Moreover, the
expectation of climate changes in terms of sea level rise, increasing rain intensity