During the winter months one can expect some rough weather. At least in here in the Netherlands the holiday months come with everything from a light shower up to torrential rain or snow storms. Although due to obvious reasons snow storms are slowly becoming a thing from the past, gale force winds are getting more common these days.
A somewhat concerning development given the fact that a large part of our country resides below sea level. Even more so when considering past events. The worst of which was the North Sea flood of 1953. Extreme weather combined with spring tide was the perfect combination for a disaster with casualties and damage in Belgium, England, the Netherlands, and Scotland. In some places sea levels rose more than 5 meters above the mean. In the Netherlands alone over 1800 people lost their lives in the storm, many more lost their homes.
After the disaster of 1953 (which made it into a film, the Dutch government made a plan to seriously upgrade the nations flood protection. The so-called Delta Works were born. On paper that is. In the coming decades after the 1953 events a long list of civil engineering projects were initiated to better protect the country from extreme sea levels. Dikes wire reinforced, dams and designated flood regions were put in place. Up to the final component was completed in 1997, 44 years after the disastrous flood of 1953.
The final component of the main flood protection works was a real challenge for the civil engineers involved. Somehow the designers had to come up with a way to protect the water entrance to the port of Rotterdam. Rotterdam is the 10th largest port in the world. One does not simply close off a harbor permanently.
The solution? Meet the Maeslant barrier. This massive structure consists of two giant arms that can temporarily close off the entry ways to Rotterdam in an attempt to keep the water out. Below you can the beast in action around the time it was completed:
The semicircle-shaped arms are hollow on the inside and can float in order to move them into the water way. Once in the closing position the hollow arms are filled with water in order to sink it fixed to the sea bed. The process works as below at high speed:
Imagine this thing closing when gale force storms are hitting it!
Since the flood protection was finished only very few times it had to be put in action. One of which was this week! Yesterday night it was announced that the barrier was closing for the storm Pia (see also). Of course this was big news in the Netherlands.
An interesting design feature of the Maeslandt Barrier lies in it's control system. While you might think there's a giant red button located somewhere in a control center, the Barrier isn't actually activated through human interference. The closure is completely determined by a computer system that is connected to weather prediction and sea-level data. If the sea levels rise more than three meters, the barrier is closed automatically by the computer system. No final call by a human site controller needed.
It has been proven that humans fail in making good decisions one out of thousand times (see also Dutch only). It was shown that relying on a well designed computer system to close the barrier would increase the trustworthiness of the system. This takes out the risk of failing human decision making altogether. Imagine sitting in the control room during a storm but the computer system not closing the barrier yet!
The Delta Works, as it was initially planned were finished with the 1997 delivery of the Maeslant Kering. The campaign to keep the Netherlands dry and safe however is never finalised. With the onset of climate change sea levels rise and weather extremes grow more extreme by the decade.
This unfortunate reality ahead therefor forces the Dutch government to keep an aye on current and future state of the protection systems in place. Although minor floods have taken place, a disaster with the extend of the 1953 flood did not happened since. Great care and vigilance is now a continuous must for the Netherlands in current and future times.
For a detailed text about the barrier see also the dedicated Dutch governmental website (English).
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