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Hotel Atlantic in Kijkduin overlooks the North Sea. On its deserted roof a state of the art laser scanner is monitoring the beach every hour, 24/7. Sander Vos hopes the resulting data will provide insight into the restoration of the coast after a storm when part of the beach and fore dunes disappear into the sea. With the information provided by the scanner he and his TU Delft colleagues hope to become ‘coastal weathermen’ who will be able to predict exactly how the beach behaves after a storm.

Heavy showers sweep over cities, flooding streets and houses when urban drainage systems get overwhelmed. Ever-increasing pressures from climate change, population growth and changes in land use augment the risks of urban floods. We’re currently unable to predict accurately where and when flooding will occur. Forecasting is particularly tricky in densely populated cities, where rainfall observations are scarce, spatial variability in land-cover is high and flood response to rainfall is very fast. Researchers want to use radar and innovative ground sensors to observe rainfall and water levels more accurately and at higher density to improve the reliability of hydrological predictions . Marie-Claire ten Veldhuis is trying to gather this information in various projects. Her objective is to unravel the complexity of urban hydrological response, to be able to predict with greater accuracy when and where streets will flood.

Reliable tap water, proper waste water treatment, and dry feet. That’s what people in the Netherlands expect and are accustomed to. However, flooded homes, sewer overflows and impassable roads occur with increasing frequency. The Randstad conurbation has suffered from severe water issues in recent months for instance. The KNMI [Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute] has predicted that the number of extreme showers will further increase in the 21st century due to global warming. The water infrastructure in our urban areas isn’t built to accommodate this, warns Professor Jules van Lier. He argues in favour of smarter solutions and a new paradigm for our Urban Water Infrastructure.

In 2014 Caroline Katsman was awarded a Vidi grant to conduct research into the influence of ocean whirls on surface water sinking. How is she getting on two (and a bit) years later? ‘2017 is going to be a bumper year, with a number of new papers in the pipeline,’ Katsman says.