Delta Life 7

25 Super-storms are rare, but the consequences are increasingly serious because more and more people are living and working in coastal areas. That is why RISC- KIT is reviewing the impact of storms on Europe's coasts and examining the effectiveness of measures such as dikes or sand nourishment. Conditions can vary enormously from place to place. BY BONNE VAN DER VEEN / IMAGE ISTOCKPHOTO S pring 2010: Cyclone Xynthia rages across Europe at 160 kilometres an hour. The western coast of France and the area around La Faute- sur-Mer in particular are badly hit. The two- hundred-year-old dike that should have protected the hinterland can't cope. There are 51 fatalities and damage amounting to between 1.5 and 2 billion euros. Cyclone Xynthia is not exceptional. In recent years, Europe has been battered by low-frequency, high- impact storms such as Lothar (1999), Kryill (2007), St. Agatha (2015) and the St. Nicholas, Cameron or Xaver storm (2013). In response to these events, the European Commission awarded the RISC-KIT (Resilience Strategies for Increasing Coasts Toolkit) project to a consortium led by Deltares. This project brings together eighteen partners from various disciplines, who are teaming up to develop five instruments to determine the vulnerability of the coast and study the effectiveness of measures such as sand nourishment or dikes. Short memory The problem with infrequent storms, which occur on average every fifty years, is that they are quickly forgotten. A historian found many more accounts than were previously known about in the archives of churches, municipalities and cemeteries on European coasts.