Singapore University is organising a Symposium on designing with resilience. Defacto’s principal Anne Loes Nillesen will lecture on ‘Designing water inclusive cities and regions’. In the lecture she will show several successful examples of urban flood risk interventions on different scales, varying from amphibious houses to integrated sea barrier designs and resilient coastal cities. She will be showing examples from the Dutch Delta programme and the Bangladesh delta plan and the Water as Leverage for Resilient Cities Asia project (also Bangladesh). With that she will demonstrate how similar design approaches lead to completely different design strategies, because of different contexts.
Lecture Urban Flooding & Infrastructure Conference at Rice University
Anne Loes Nillesen will give a lecture on the theme of Urban Design for Flood Protection on the Urban Flooding & Infrastructure Conference at the Rice University on February 21st.
Delta regions throughout the world, such as Houston, are subject to severe flood-risks. Rapid growth frequently leads to increased vulnerability with respect to coastal and storm water flooding. In her lecture, Anne Loes will present integrated strategies for flood risk management and urban development. She will use examples from the Dutch Delta Programme and Bangladesh Deltaplan to illustrate some of the latest water management and design tools; these tools can be used on different scales, varying from regional and urban development strategies to neighborhood redevelopment and street- and building design level.
Defacto’s flood risk design for Houston broadcasted by Fox News
After hurricane Harvey, which caused a lot of damage in Houston in august 2017, a lot of media attention was given to the water safety plan which Defacto worked on for the ‘Houston-Galveston bay area’. One of the sketches made by Defacto for the storme surge barrier which closes off the bay and protects the area from high water levels was broadcasted by the Fox News.
The coastal protectionstrategy has been developed in collaboration with the Texas A&M University (Bill Merrel and Sam Brody) by a Dutch consortium consisting of Defacto, the TU Delft, Royal HaskoningDHV and IV-infra.
The Ike Dike in The New York Times
In an elaborate opinion article, journalist Roy Scranton points out the gravity of the hurricanes that are yet to visit the Houston and Galveston area, where the largest petrochemical industries of the USA are based. The fight to protect this region from heavy weather has been going on since the Great Storm of 1900. With the eye on climate change and accompanying weather conditions ahead, it becomes more and more clear that this is a fight that simply cannot be lost.
In order to prevent such disasters from happening, two research teams from Texas A&M Galveston and the Sspeed Center at Rice University, in cooperation with various other research partners, amongst which Defacto, have been developing the so-called ‘Ike Dike’ storm surge. Defacto has been one of the endeavour’s research partners since 2014.
To learn more about this project, please visit our project page. To read the whole article, visit the New York Times’ website.
Defacto Lecture at A&M University, Texas, USA
During the month of October 2016, Anne Loes Nilessen, director of Defacto, has travelled through the United States and gave lectures at several universities throughout the country. The second university she visited was A&M University in Texas. Here, she spoke together with Dale Morris and presented on the latest developments of the landscape design for the Ike Dike, which is meant to protect the Houston-Galveston region from hurricane storm surge. The Ike Dike was built after hurricane Ike caused great damage to the region in 2008.
Defacto has been involved in the development of the Ike Dike since 2014. To learn more about this project, please visit our project page.
Defacto Lecture at LSU College of Art & Design, USA
During the month of October 2016, Anne Loes Nellisen, director of Defacto, has travelled through the United States and gave lectures at several universities throughout the country. The first university she passed by was the LSU College of Art & Design in Louisiana. On october 17 she presented a lecture to the students of LSU’s Coastal Resilience progam. She discussed the latest developments in the Dutch field of urban water management and resilience and showed several projects which are featured in Defacto’s latest publication ‘Delta Interventions’.
Delta Interventions presents a selection of research-by-design projects developed in the Delta Interventions Studio at the Delft University of Technology. The variety of student projects aim to inspire others with an interest in urban developments in delta regions worldwide. To learn more about the publication, please visit the Publications section on our website.
Photo credits: LSU University
TU Delft Hydraulic Engineering Model
Defacto has designed and built an innovative presentation model for the Department of Hydraulic Engineering of the Delft University of Technology which demonstrates the latest innovations in the field of urban water management. The 2-meter wide model was commissioned by the Volker-Van Zwieteren family, who donated it to the faculty of civil engineering in commemoration of their son, ir. Thijs van Zwieteren. The model shows a part of the south-west of the Netherlands and explains the development of the water system over time and the state of the art in hydraulic engineering. Next to the urban development and historical development of the flood risk system, also contemporary themes such as ‘building with nature’, ‘room for the river’, ecology and energy transitions are explained. To do so, the model combines high resolution animations with interviews with some of the department’s Professors, and of course the physical qualities of the model itself.
The model was officially revealed on Friday, the 13th of May 2016. This project was generously sponsored by several Dutch companies and institutions, including the Delfland waterboard, Van Oord, IV-Infra, Rijkswaterstaat, Witteveen+Bos, Deltares, HKV, TU Delft, Fugro and the province of South-Holland.
Deltas in Times of Climate Change Congress 2014
As one of the speakers at the ‘Deltas in Times of Climate Change’ congress in Rotterdam, Anne Loes Nillesen presented her lecture to a wide audience. Under the title ‘Improving the Allocation of Flood Risk Interventions from an Urban and Landscape Design Perspective’, she described an integral approach to flood-risk protection and spatial design, that allows for an active involvement of landscape architects and urban designers in the allocation of flood-risk interventions within the Dutch Delta.
Interview Anne Loes Nillesen for Climate TV
Knowledge for Climate highlights various themes of research in climate adaptation by publishing an online film series. Anne Loes Nillesen is featured in the series’ third episode.
Click here to watch video (in Dutch) on Youtube.
Lecture Delta Design Houston, Texas
During the seminar on strategies for flood risk protection in the Houston Texas, Anne Loes Nillesen delivered a lecture on Regional Delta design. During the same event, Robert de Kort gave a lecture on how to realize a qualitative relation between city and water.