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Reef-lined islands are often low-lying and thus extremely vulnerable to coastal flooding. The vanishing of coral reefs worldwide gives the waves free rein. Besides efforts to protect the reefs, ways to artificially restore coral reefs are being devised. Can the proposed reef restoration be an effective mitigation measure against flooding?

Professor Gertjan Medema has been awarded the Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize 2024 for his groundbreaking research and significant contributions to sewage epidemiology for virus detection in wastewater during the COVID-19 pandemic. His timely research breakthrough enabled the use of wastewater surveillance during the COVID-19 pandemic. President Tharman Shanmugaratnam of the Republic of Singapore presented the Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize medallion to Gertjan Medema. At the beginning of the pandemic, he and his team were the first to detect the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater in the Netherlands. His research enabled the use of wastewater surveillance during the COVID-19 pandemic to stop the spread of the virus and had a global impact.

New findings from a spaceborne monitoring team of University of Houston, TU Delft and DLR indicates the collapse of the Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine may have been already ongoing before the war with Russia, with deformations in the dam pre-dating the actual collapse. The results were published in the journal Nature Communications Earth and Environment this month.

Structures constructed to produce energy offshore have to hold out in rough circumstances. The so-called jacket foundations made of large steel tubes that fixate windmills to the seabed are sensitive to fatigue loading, especially their welded connections. In the near future, the fatigue endurance of this steel construction can be a hundred times better thanks to an innovation by TU Delft of wrapping the joints with composite material, instead of welding them.