54 Cities with high drought risk: water system knowledge and good governance are the solution

31 May 2018

Day Zero in Cape Town. Cape Town has been afflicted by long periods of drought for a number of years. The water shortage caused by low rainfall and falling water levels in the reservoirs became so severe last January that wat...

Nature-based solutions; do we know how to do it?

10 April 2018

Implementation of nature-based interventions is on the rise. Nature now often has new functional labels added, parks for ‘water retention’, mangroves ‘for coastal resilience’ and oyster reefs as ‘living shorelines�...

Cascading failures of Critical Infrastructure during floods in Manzese Ward — Dar es Salaam

23 November 2017

Critical infrastructure such as roads, power stations, transformers, water points and health centres, plays an important role in the functioning of wards in Dar es Salaam. If critical infrastructure fails, the livelihoods and...

Solutions for the Energy Transition

16 November 2017

The new Dutch government pursues a rigorous climate policy to achieve the objectives of the Paris climate agreement. GHG emissions must be reduced by at least 20% in 2020 and 40% in 2030, compared to 1990 levels, while emissi...

Using community mapping for flood modelling

16 November 2017

Dar Es Salaam’s community mapping projects, Ramani Huria (“Open Map”) and Zuia Mafuriko (“Stop Floods”), convened by the World Bank and the Tanzania Red Cross Society, have collected a vast amount of data, detailing...

9 Must See Water Highlights When You Come to Delft

1 November 2017

Each year, hundreds of international water managers, engineers and scientists visit Deltares, a research institute for water and soil management in delta areas. The visitors come to work with us on joint research projects, to...

The implementation of complex Nature-Based Solutions in cities

1 November 2017

Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) are multi-functional solutions inspired by nature that draw on natural forces and resources. They exploit natural capital with two or more ecosystem services. An NBS can be a natural area or an ap...

XBeach: 10 years of open-source coastal modelling

30 October 2017

In 2004, four hurricanes made landfall on the sandy coasts of Florida causing extensive damage. The U.S. Corps of Engineers realized that they were in need of an advanced tool based on physical principles to be able to assess...

Towards a survival kit for a watery planet

29 September 2017

The Global High-Level Panel on Water and Peace officially launched 14 September 2017 its concluding report “A MATTER OF SURVIVAL”. It makes clear what the title says: “The world needs to fundamentally rethink its global...

Improving projections of future sea level rise

7 July 2017

About 12.000 years ago sea level was more 60m lower than today and large parts of the North Sea were dry land. In the following 4.000 years sea level rose more than 40m and the North Sea was formed. This story currently lies ...