News

We love holidays on the beach and about a quarter of the world's population live on coasts because of the favourable economic location. But until now we have had only a very vague picture of how coastal areas have evolved worldwide over the years. Scientists in Delft are changing this. Researchers from Deltares, Delft University of Technology and IHE have analysed changes in 50,000 beaches over a 35-year period. They present their findings today in Nature Scientific Reports.

Prof.dr.ir. Mark van Koningsveld has been installed as the new holder of the chair of Ports & Waterways. Van Koningsveld is taking over from prof. Ir. Tiedo Vellinga and will continue the chair’s main brief which is to conduct research into the areas of port infrastructure and design and nautical matters.

Lukt het om voor het eerst een oceaanwervel door te meten? Voorzichtig druppelen de eerste data binnen. Het lijkt binnen de wervel een stuk minder turbulent dan verwacht.

A Dutch-Texan team found that most Houston-area drowning deaths from Hurricane Harvey occurred outside the zones designated by government as being at higher risk of flooding: the 100- and 500-year floodplains. Harvey, one of the costliest storms in US history, hit southeast Texas on 25 August 2017 causing unprecedented flooding and killing dozens. Researchers at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and Rice University in Texas published their results today in the European Geosciences Union journal Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences.

Rising sea levels are affected by all kinds of different factors, most of which we can now effectively unravel and explain almost everywhere in the world. This is according to TU Delft researcher Thomas Frederikse, who has also established that the average rise in sea levels worldwide is accelerating. Moreover, the days on earth are becoming slightly longer... Frederikse will be awarded his doctorate on Monday, 19 March.

TU Delft’s Executive Board has appointed Professor Jan Dirk Jansen as Dean of the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences (CEG) with effect from 1 May 2018. Jan Dirk Jansen succeeds professor Bert Geerken, who will retire in May 2018.

Mid-January, in the middle of high water in the rivers and a one in twenty year storm event from the North Sea, the Swiss journalist Mathias Plüss visited The Netherlands for a one-week tour along Dutch highlights of Hydraulic Engineering and Water Management. As part of that, he also visited Delft University. His trip resulted in an article, well worth reading, with lots of personal observations on how The Netherlands deal with water.

From Feb 5th to Feb 11th, a unique research cruise initiated by Environmental Fluidmechanics will take place in the Caribbean. During this week, the Dutch research vessel Pelagia will sail from Aruba to St Maarten to perform the first hydrographic survey of an ocean eddy in the region.

Global warming made the extreme rainfall of Hurricane Harvey, which hit Texas in August 2017, three times more likely and fifteen percent more intense than it could have been, scientists, one of whom from TU Delft, found.