Management and Maintenance of Dikes and Banks

As a low-lying and highly developed country, the Netherlands is continuously facing potential flooding disasters. That\u92s why we need strong safe water-retaining structures like sea and river-dikes. Moreover half of the country lies below mean high water level. Without dikes more than half of the country would be endangered by flooding. About 60% of the total Dutch population lives in low lying areas. The history of the Netherlands is marked by storm surge disasters. The most recent major flood disaster occurred in 1953. Nearly 90 dikes were breached and 150.000 ha of polderland was inundated. This caused the death of 1850 people and 100.000 persons had to be evacuated.This disaster gave a new impulse for improving the whole sea defence system in the Netherlands. Moreover research into failure mechanisms of flood control structures was started. Over the last decades this has resulted, together with the experience obtained by the execution of the flood control structures improvements, in a considerable amount of high standard guidelines for the design of dikes, seawalls, revetments and other coastal structures.KWP-collectio