PDENG Position: FutureDikes - designing eco-friendly strong dike covers for enhanced flood protection

Water managers in the Netherlands are facing a huge challenge to reinforce the dikes to keep the country safe under climate change with increasing floods, droughts and decreasing biodiversity. The FutureDikes project aims to develop knowledge and tools to realize species rich dike covers, which make dikes stronger and ecologically sustainable. The key question in FutureDikes that is tackled together with the project partners, is how to realize species-rich, biodiverse dike covers and to what extent such dike covers increase dike strength? Ultimately, we want to deliver the tools and protocols for the HWBP to design, manage and maintain species-rich dike covers in a cost effective way.

The FutureDikes project is funded by HWBP (Dutch Flood Protection Program) and is a close collaboration with the different partners, such as Radboud University, Waterboard Rivierenland, Deltares, Infram-Hydren and others. This 2-year research project focusses on the erosion resistance of species-rich dike covers by developing calculation tools to be able to include species-rich dike covers in the design and safety assessment protocol (WBI). Erosion of the dike cover due to wave overtopping is one of the main failure mechanisms of dikes. Currently, species-rich dike covers exist, but cannot be included in the design and safety assessment protocols (WBI) for dikes. Therefore a range of species-rich dike covers will be analyzed and tested using sod-pulling tests, vegetation analysis and soil composition. This will provide insight in the strength of such dike covers. This knowledge will be translated into models and calculation rules for easy assessment of dikes with a species-rich cover. This enables the construction of strong, biodiverse dikes on a national scale. Additionally, the sod-pulling method will be analyzed and improved if needed. Finally, field-scale wave overtopping tests are developed, executed and analyzed for verification of the developed models. Ultimately, the aim is to develop, with the project partners, the design and assessment tools and calculation rules to enable the realization of species-rich dike covers. You will be encouraged to present your results at (international) conferences and write your findings in journal papers. Possibilities for extending this project into a PhD can be explored during the project.

The PDEng is a 2-year post-Master Degree technological designers programme. This programme at the University of Twente contains an educational part and a design project. For the project, you will work within the FutureDikes project. The educational programme will have an in-depth character with ample attention for professional development and will be partly tailored to the design project. Together with external organisations, you will develop a high-level and creative solution for the given problem.