Abstract. The Dutch Flood Protection Programme (DFPP) of The Netherlands is aimed at improving flood protection structures up to the newly derived safety standards. It is expected that roughly 50% of the primary flood protection structures need reinforcement with respect to newly derived safety standards. On a national level the necessary projects are ranked based on the actual flooding risk and fitted within the budget constraints. Additional goals of the DFPP are to improve performance in project management, to enhance the quality of more integral solutions and to expand the cooperation between all authorities involved. The DFPP is an alliance of the Dutch Water Authorities and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment, but also a methodology in which the Ministry, regional water authorities, scientific institutes, consultancy and construction companies participate.
The Dutch regional water authorities face an enormous task: the strengthening of about 1500 km of dikes and 500 civil-engineering structures before 2050. This immense operation is being funded, prioritised and supported by the Dutch Flood Protection Programme (DFPP), an alliance of regional water authorities and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management. The work will be executed in nearly 300 projects located throughout the country on the coast, lakes and major rivers. To complete this task on time and within budget, innovation (a better insight into the behaviour of flood defences, new techniques and processes) is believed to be the way forward. In this paper, we look at how the DFPP has encouraged innovations between 2012 and the present. We stress the importance of using a sender–receiver approach to further knowledge transfer and uptake, and we describe how, by using an action research approach, the Dutch Flood Protection Programme is currently adapting its innovation strategy on the basis of lessons learned to improve knowledge uptake. We will address some of the innovations that have been developed over the years and how monitoring knowledge uptake helps to further improve the learning-by-doing approach.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.