Deltares: New Toolkit Improves Coastal Protection

Eighteen European partners are joining forces to develop a toolkit for making coasts less vulnerable to flooding and the impact of floods.

The new toolkit provides policymakers with concrete instruments and methods for enhancing protection of their coast from the dangers of sea flooding, coastal erosion and sudden floods caused by rainfall.

Deltares in coordinator role

The joint project that will develop the toolkit is known as RISC-KIT (Resilience-Increasing Strategies for Coasts – toolKIT) and it was established in response to a European application as part of FP7. It will help to meet EU objectives for mitigating the impacts of natural disasters. Deltares is the coordinator for this major project, which started on 1 November for a period of three and a half years.

Toolkit with four open-source products

The toolkit will consist of four open-source and freely accessible products:

-A Coastal Risk Assessment Framework that can be used for the rapid identification of “hot spots” (areas at risk) at the regional level.

-A flood warning system (based on FEWS) and a decision support system for the hotspots developed by Deltares and Delft University of Technology.

-An on-line management guide with a library of innovative and cost-efficient measures that coastal managers can initiate to protect their coasts better.

-A database with physical, demographic and economic data.

Better decisions by the authorities

The toolkit will be tested on sites in ten different European countries but it will ultimately be possible to use it throughout the world. Government authorities will have a tool at their disposal for making better decisions about flood protection in their countries.

Kick-off on 20 November

From 20 to 22 November (inclusive), 40 participants from various European countries will meet for the first time at the project kick-off meeting, which will be at Deltares in Delft.

[mappress]

Press Release, November 20, 2013