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Canal dikes in low‐lying polders, as well as in other regions worldwide, are critical infrastructure for flood protection and water management. The subsurface water conditions can cause dike failures during excessive rainfall and prolonged periods of drought. There is a lack of multi‐year monitoring of subsurface water conditions in canal dikes and an insufficient understanding of their geohydrological behavior. This study provides and analyses a novel multiyear data set of soil moisture and hydraulic heads (from February 2020 until March 2023) from a monitoring network covering various canal dikes with different characteristics in the western Netherlands. The data, including two extremely dry summers, highlight the impact of meteorological variations on the subsurface water conditions. Non‐hydrostatic hydraulic head levels were observed during droughts that can be detrimental to dike stability and that are often not accounted for in safety assessments for drought situations. The effectiveness of various meteorological drought indicators applied to subsurface water conditions was evaluated: the precipitation deficit is the most reliable measure and outperforms the standardized drought indicators (SPEI and SPI). The drought recovery of dikes was analyzed to understand seasonal transitions and the sequence of different failure mechanisms, during dry and wet situations. This analysis also reveals differences between meteorological, soil moisture, and groundwater droughts, highlighting soil's storage capacity after drought and the limitations of meteorological drought indicators as proxies for soil moisture and groundwater. The insights from this study enhance assessments, inspection procedures and the identification of weak spots of dikes and other earthworks of infrastructure. Key Points Novel multiyear observations of soil moisture and hydraulic heads from various canal dikes reveal geohydrological behavior The precipitation deficit emerges as the most reliable meteorological drought indicator and can be used as an indicator of dike safety The drought recovery lasted 4.5 months in 2022, which is important for the transition between seasons and different failure mechanisms

Worldwide, cities rely on the proper functioning of critical infrastructures (CIs) such as electricity, telecommunication, water supply and transportation. Failure of those infrastructures can lead to significant and long‐lasting impacts, even far beyond the flooded areas due to cascading effects. Local authorities are eager to take action to reduce flood risk and strive to increase the resilience of their communities. However, CI are often not considered in flood risk assessments. One of the reasons is that CI operators do not share their CI data and internal risk assessments. Therefore, an integral view on flood risk is lacking and risks may be unidentified or underestimated. To overcome this limitation, in this paper we propose an integrated framework for flood risk assessment of urban critical infrastructures (UCIs) for local authorities, which is based on publicly available and field‐surveyed CI data. The proposed framework supports cities to carry out cross‐sectoral risk screenings on urban district level to evaluate the need for in‐depth risk assessments and risk dialogues with CI operators.

This paper introduces an integrated approach to flood risk management in which spatial quality is included ex-ante. Compared to the uniform dike-ring and room for the river approaches, two alternatives used in the Netherlands, this new approach offers a flood risk management strategy that reduces the negative impact on spatial quality of the interventions that are necessary to meet the basic safety standard.

Flood prone areas are often protected against flooding by an extensive network of flood defenses. To ensure their structural integrity, these flood defenses are periodically assessed. Many levees have been functioning well for decades, and have survived several relatively high hydraulic loads within their lifetime. However, information on survived load conditions is seldom included in levee safety assessments. Observed degradation from levee inspections is also not taken into account. That way, information that is useful to improve the accuracy of estimations of the actual strength of the levee remains unexploited. This study proposes a pragmatic approach to include observations of survived loads and levee degradation in the levee safety assessment. This approach consists of three steps: (1) a prior estimation of the failure probability, based on levee characteristics, (2) a posterior estimation of the failure probability, based on observed hydraulic loads, and (3) correction of the posterior failure probability estimation, based on levee inspections. In a case study, the estimated failure probabilities using this approach were much lower than when information on levee performance was not included. This study demonstrates the value of levee performance observations and how they could be included to improve levee safety assessments.

Objective of this paper is to study how reliability standards, expressed as probabilities of dike segment failure, can be practically updated to improve opportunities for risk‐based dike design and planning. The approach to assess the economic optimal flood probability, used by the Dutch Delta Committee (1958, in this paper referred to as Van Dantzig), is adapted to reflect time‐dependent effects of a.o. climate change and subsidence. Furthermore, the approach is adapted to reflect overtopping instead of overflow and it is extended to include reinforcements over time. A comparison of the results of the Adapted Van Dantzig approach with the economic optimal probabilities used as input for the recently formalised Dutch standards (2017) is performed for 73 dike segments in the Netherlands, showing good agreement. Following the Adapted Van Dantzig approach, an analytical relation is developed for economic optimal design horizons, dependent on the dike design, and characteristics of load, investment, climate effect, and economic growth. Finally, a dynamic and simple‐to‐use approach is developed to enable updating of the economic optimal reliability based on a proposed design and investment planning. This can serve to consider whether an existing reliability standard still fits adequately or needs updating.

One of the most rapidly emerging measures in infrastructure asset management is Structural Health Monitoring (SHM), which aims at reducing uncertainty in structural performance by using monitoring equipment. As earthen flood defence structures typically have large strength uncertainties, such techniques can be particularly promising. However, insight in the key characteristics for successful SHM for flood defences is lacking, which hampers the practical implementation. In this study, we explore the benefits of pore pressure monitoring, one of the most promising SHM techniques for earthen flood defences. The approach is based on a Bayesian pre-posterior analysis, and results are evaluated based on the Value of Information (VoI) obtained from different monitoring strategies. We specifically investigate the effect on long-term reinforcement decisions. The results show that, next to the relative magnitude of reducible uncertainty, the combination of the probability of having a useful observation and the duration of a SHM effort determine the VoI. As it is likely that increasing loads due to climate change will result in more frequent future reinforcements, the influence of scenarios of different rates of increase in future loads is also investigated. It was found that, in all considered possible scenarios, monitoring yields a positive Value of Information, hence it is an economically efficient measure for flood defence asset management both now and in the future.

Integrating natural components in flood defence infrastructure can add resilience to sea-level rise. Natural foreshores can keep pace with sea-level rise by accumulating sediment and attenuate waves before reaching the adjacent flood defences. In this study we address how natural foreshores affect the future need for dike heightening. A simplified model of vertical marsh accretion was combined with a wave model and a probabilistic evaluation of dike failure by overtopping. The sensitivity of a marsh-dike system was evaluated in relation to a combination of processes: (1) sea-level rise, (2) changes in sediment concentration, (3) a retreat of the marsh edge, and (4) compaction of the marsh. Results indicate that foreshore processes considerably affect the need for dike heightening in the future. At a low sea-level rise rate, the marshes can accrete such that dike heightening is partially mitigated. But with sea-level rise accelerating, a threshold is reached where dike heightening needs to compensate for the loss of marshes, and for increasing water levels. The level of the threshold depends mostly on the delivery of sediment and degree of compaction on the marsh; with sufficient width of the marsh, lateral erosion only has a minor effect. The study shows how processes and practices that hamper or enhance marsh development today exacerbate or alleviate the challenge of flood protection posed by accelerated sea-level rise.

To make informed flood risk management (FRM) decisions in large protected river systems, flood risk and hazard analyses should include the potential for dike breaching. ‘Load interdependency’ analyses attempt to include the system-wide effects of dike breaching while accounting for the uncertainty of both river loads and dike fragility. The intensive stochastic computation required for these analyses often precludes the use of complex hydraulic models, but simpler models may miss spatial inundation interactions such as flows that ‘cascade’ between compartmentalised regions and overland flows that ‘shortcut’ between river branches. The potential for these interactions in the Netherlands has previously been identified, and so a schematisation of the Dutch floodplain and protection system is here developed for use in a load interdependency analysis. The approach allows for the spatial distribution of hazard to be quantified under various scenarios and return periods. The results demonstrate the importance of including spatial inundation interactions on hazard estimation at three specific locations, and for the system in general. The modelling approach can be used at a local scale to focus flood-risk analysis and management on the relevant causes of inundation, and at a system-wide scale to estimate the overall impact of large-scale measures.

Managing the water and flood risk in low-lying polder regions depends on the performance of canal dikes. This performance is influenced by hydraulic heads, which can peak due to heavy rainfall, affecting their stability and potentially inducing dike breaches. Variations in head responses and head statistics are relevant for regional flood risk analysis of canal dike systems. This study examined the dynamics of peak heads in canal dikes on a national scale using time series models calibrated on a unique dataset of head observations across the dike system. Various model structures were evaluated, and a non-linear model performed the best. These models were used to simulate 30 years of head time series representing current and future climate scenarios. Subsequently, dike clusters were identified based on the coincidence of peak heads, allowing for the identification of dikes where peaks are caused by (dis)similar types of rainfall events. The differences and similarities in peak head response between dikes and identified clusters were related to physical dike characteristics. While the subsurface material and dike width appeared to influence the head response variation of clusters, their presence across multiple clusters indicates that they do not yield a definitive outcome. Moreover, peak head statistics across various dikes indicated that extreme and yearly occurring load conditions are relatively close to each other, with a median decimate height of only 15 cm. With climate change driving higher winter precipitation and summer evaporation, head statistics are changing. By 2100, extreme peak heads are expected to occur between 3 times less and 8 times more frequently, depending on the climate scenario and the type of canal dike.

In many parts of the world, flooding is a big risk. There are numerous strategies to reduce flood risk. The amount of flood risk reduction strategies grows exponentially with the amount of possible measures that can be implemented and possible timings when measures can be implemented. In this paper, the use of a financial method called “equivalent” annual cost (EAC) is assessed to reduce that number of strategies and evaluate cost-optimal strategies. The use of EAC allows the comparison between short-term and long-term measures by expressing them into an annual interest weighted expected expenditure. As soon as a measure has to be implemented (i.e. the annual risk becomes too large or the safety standards are exceeded), the EAC for all combinations of measures is determined and the combination is implemented with the lowest EAC. This almost leads to cost-optimal flood risk reduction strategies that, by manual optimization, can be improved further. A case study has also been performed in the Hollandsche IJssel which proved the use of EAC. Here it has led to cost-optimal flood risk reduction strategies. The method is tested in one case and it is recommended to apply and test it in other cases as well.