Polder2C's: Strategies for climate adaptation in the 2 Seas region
The 2 Seas regions – consisting of the Netherlands, Belgium, France and the United Kingdom – has a shared history and common challenges. Polder2C's was set up to adapt and protect this region from rising sea levels and increasingly frequent heavy storms.
The project’s mission extended beyond adaption, however. It focused on the four pillars that underpin its structure: fortifying flood defences, designing superior emergency response plans, enhancing the knowledge infrastructure to facilitate informed decision-making and setting up a field station to monitor and respond to real-time changes.
Rijkswaterstaat’s involvement as a partner in Polder2C's entailed maintaining its national flood defences and assessing their capacities. Rijkswaterstaat is also the national coordinator of crisis and emergency response teams for flood defence systems in the Netherlands.
Polder2C's aligned well with Rijkswaterstaat’s longstanding experience in project management and participation in INTERREG projects, as well as other projects in Northwest Europe, such as INTERREG North Sea Region, INTERREG VL-NL, Life, FP7, Horizon2020, TEN-T/CEF.
The flooding of the Hedwige-Prosper polder created a unique 6 km2 living laboratory for the validation of flood protection and emergency measures.
The uncertainty about the strength of the flood barriers and the effectiveness of the emergency measures in an actual crisis were the greatest obstacles facing the project.
Adding to the tasks was the need to sensitise not just the key stakeholders but also the wider public to the fact that there is no such thing as guaranteed protection against flooding.
The countries participating in Polder2C's were all given the same task: to test the reliability and robustness of their flood-risk strategies and emergency protocols in real-life scenarios.
Building climate resilience and improving adaptability in the 2 Seas area
The aim of the living lab was to bring together the countries in the southern North Sea and English Channel region (the 2 Seas area) and form a collective front around a shared purpose: to improve the region’s ability to adapt to climate change.
The underlying vision was to strengthen the four pillars that serve as the region’s defence against changing climate patterns. As such, the project served to facilitate appropriate climate-response strategies and knowledge sharing.
2C's Project: strategies and tools to address extreme weather events
The Polder2C's project revealed the true strength of our dikes and how they can withstand the expected increase in hydraulic load that climate change threatens to bring in the future.
Indeed, the resilience of these dikes surpassed our estimates, though they are not without vulnerabilities. The project also revealed the serious damage that irregularities such as animal burrows can cause to the dikes.
To protect the population from flood risks, Rijkswaterstaat has instigated an effective emergency response system. This includes a user-friendly tool to inspect flood defences during extreme events. Rijkswaterstaat has also trained flood defence staff, equipping them with a ready-to-use toolbox for decisive action during flood scenarios.
Rijkswaterstaat and the other project participants have benefited by sharing knowledge on crisis management during Polder2C''s. This has made it possible to develop a framework, which is now being used to write an International Handbook Emergency Response for Flood Defences.
Moreover, the project has delivered a programme for future collaboration.
Project period
2019 - 2023
European Programme
Project website
Partners
Stowa, Flanders Hydraulics Research,University of Lille, Cerema (French website).KU Leuven, HZ University of Applied Sciences, TU Delft, Environment Agency, South West Water UK, Province of Zeeland (Dutch website), ISL Engineering
