Delta Life 11

High-ranking visit Deltares won no fewer than two prizes in the past six months: first prize for the Coarse Sand Barrier in the Flood Risk Management category of the 2018 Water Innovation Award. This invention allows water to flow under a dike without weakening it. It involves introducing a barrier of coarse sand behind a dike that stops backward erosion piping: the washing away of fine sand. The Room for the River collective, which includes Deltares, won the 2018 Maaskant Prize in October last year. The jury described Room for the River, a project to make the Rhine catchment safer and more attractive after the floods of 1993 and 1995, as 'a unique collaborative programme'. Deltares wins two prizes Deltares ORGANISATION The President of Singapore, Mrs. Halimah Yacob, her husband Mohamed Abdullah Alhabshee and King Willem- Alexander paid a flying visit to Deltares in November last year. At the request of the Singapore delegation, there was a discussion of the challenges of climate change and sea rise, and the implications for the city state. There was also time to look at the Deltares alliance with the National University of Singapore (NUS). Frans Klijn appointed professor of Adaptive Delta Planning at Delft University of Technology The Deltares researcher in applied geo-ecology and policy analysis Frans Klijn has been appointed Professor of Adaptive Delta at the Administration and Management Faculty of Delft University of Technology. His inaugural lecture ' Wanted: A river pilot - For the future of our rivers ' was on 30 January 2019. He argued that climate-related hazards, such as storm surges, floods and salinisation, hit hardest in deltas. That is why, in our delta plans, we strive to establish strategies for adapting deltas to these changes and making them less vulnerable to the ever-more urgent threats of storms, high water and drought. Klijn believes that those strategies can be based on the concepts of resilience and robustness so that events remain manageable rather than developing into disasters. 28 DELTARES, MARCH 2019

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