Flood Risk

The effects of climate change, sea level rise and rapid urbanization pose important challenges for the Netherlands and other worldwide delta areas. The development of knowledge for improved flood risk management is therefore essential.

The group has a strong position and interest in the field of flood risk management, with an emphasis on quantitative flood risk analysis and probabilistic design and evaluation of flood defences. Group members have been involved in the development of approaches for reliability analysis of flood defence systems, including various geotechnical failure mechanisms such as piping / seepage. Various post-flood field investigations have been undertaken, e.g. in Thailand and New Orleans, to better understand the behavior of flood protection systems. The group aims to develop new probabilistic design approaches for flood defence systems, also by including the concept of resilience and the consideration of various failure modes.

An important area of research has focused on the development of methods for estimating loss of life and damages due to floods. Finally, approaches for presenting and evaluating flood risks have been developed over the past years and these methods will be implemented in the Dutch policies in the coming years. See also the research page for ongoing projects. 

Various groups at Delft University do research that is related to flood risk, e.g. in the field of hydraulic and geotechnical engineering, water management, disaster management, evacuation traffic modeling, delta urbanism and policy analysis. The Delft Flood Risk Center will be established to strengthen the coherence of various activities within this theme at Delft University.

Waal flood 1995 (by Rijkswaterstaat)