Fresh off a commission designing a floating mosque in Dubai, Oltenhuis is working on Het Nieuwe Water, a 2.5m-wide project near The Hague that would include a series of floating apartments designed to rise and fall with the water level.
Such ideas are not new: There are already floating houses in the Dutch town of Maasbommel, to say nothing of Amsterdam’s houseboats. They point toward the trend of living with the water rather than trying to keep it out. The ultimate goal of the varied efforts across the country is to keep people dry while at the same time reacting more quickly to the threat of flooding.
The problem, some say, is that the Dutch have so much faith in their flood systems that they don’t respond with urgency when danger threatens.
“We would like to be two times faster and two times better in our decision making,” said Piet Dircke, a program manager at engineering firm Arcadis and chairman of the Flood Control 2015 initiative.
At the IJkdijk dike-testing facility near Groningen in the far north of the country, the group is testing a range of sensors from different companies embedded in dikes to see if any demonstrate potential in predicting when and how a dike will fail.
But even before water hits the dikes, there are those who think it would be better to block its path in the first place.
Enter the Wadden Works, a concept for a campground alongside small lakes that would sit in front of the Afsluitdijk, a causeway built in the late 1920s and early 1930s to close off a salt water inlet of the North Sea called the Zuiderzee.
Developed by engineering and consultancy firm DHV, Wadden Works would create a major new recreation area in the north of the country, while acting as a natural breakwater for one of the most important dikes in the world.
Almost anyone involved in water in the Netherlands will tell you without hesitation that preparation is essential. Water will encroach from rising seas and river flooding because of climate change.
“We are more accepting now of the concept that nature will come. The water will rise,” said Martin Karelse, a hydraulic engineer by training who serves as a program manager for DHV.
A government commission recommended last year that the Netherlands spend an extra 1 billion euros a year over 100 years to improve its flood control. With the Dutch economy hurting from the global slowdown, few expect the budget this month to allocate anything close to that.
While the existing flood defenses are generally held to be adequate, the uncertainties around climate change leave those closest to the water — literally and figuratively — on edge.
“Not everything in the Netherlands is as set in place and organized as people think,” the CPWC’s Hafkenscheid said.
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