Adaptation Strategies for At-Risk Communities

The Netherlands offers one of the world's longest-running models of engineered coastal adaptation. After the catastrophic North Sea flood of 1953, which killed over 1,800 people in the Netherlands, the government built the Delta Works, a vast system of dams, sluices, storm surge barriers, and dykes completed in stages through the late twentieth century, including the Oosterscheldekering storm surge barrier completed in 1986. More recently, the Dutch "Room for the River" program, launched in 2007 and largely completed by 2018, shifted strategy from purely raising and strengthening dykes toward deliberately widening floodplains and relocating some dykes further inland at various sites along the Rhine, Meuse, and IJssel rivers, lowering peak flood-water levels for downstream cities such as Nijmegen.