Climate Adaptive Infrastructure and sustainability ..Brace for Impact.

By: Hani Hussein Gad

Walls used to protect societies from dangers threatening Human and their resources. nature used to recommend locations, and sizes of human societies. in general, Human had no tendency to resist or control nature. Arride locations, those in danger of floods, extremely hot, or extremely cold locations had been less attractive for humans to occupy.

Last two centuries, Humans acquired power and knowledge, and better understanding of natural phenomena. Modern Societies investements in the places they occupy became too huge to relocate, populations became much greater to be shifted to safer locations.

Today and Tomorrow, Nations have to defend their homelands, not by fightening nature, as they have unlikely chance to win such battle, but by controlling the effect of these natural phenomena on individuals’ life. Through studying and forecasting changes, prepare plans to control and slow these changes down, to be braced for impact on individual, national as well as global scales.?

Climate Adaption, The Netherlands

The Netherlands is a delta. Water is everywhere. In fact, the Netherlands is so low lying so that nearly 60% of the country is at risk of flooding. To protect, dikes were constructed to protect the low lands of the country, the most famous ones were built following disasters. Like the?Afsluitdijk?following the storm surge of 1916 and the delta works after the devastating floods of 1953. Nowadays, country is safe and sustainable but venerable. Without continuous actions, risks remain threatening because the sea level is rising while the inland soil subsides, temperature is rising, and the weather become even more extreme from heavy rain to dry periods. Above all, there are more and more people and investment need to be protected against water rising levels, surges, and shoreline erosion.

Afsluitdijk, The Sea Walls Saved a Nation

Constructed more than 85-years ago to protect the low-lying areas of the Netherlands from?flooding, the Afsluitdijk is a true wonder of engineering.?Spanning 32 kilometres and holding back the Wadden Sea, the project was one of the largest?engineering feats of its time and is credited with saving large parts of the country from?catastrophic flooding in 1953.?But while the Afsluitdijk has stood firm for almost a century, rising sea levels and stronger?storms mean that Dutch authorities are now investing USD $617M to strengthen the structure?so it can withstand a one-in-ten-thousand-year storm.

Using 75,000 concrete blocks, constructing new drainage systems and being aided by the?latest technology, thisnation-saving seawall is getting a super-sized upgrade.?When works first started in 1927, the construction of the Afsluitdijk was one of the largest?undertakings of its kind anywhere in the world - with more than 36 million cubic metres of?material needed to span the 32-kilometre mouth of the Zuiderzee.

Figure?1?Afsluitdijk

Starting in four locations along the length of the dyke, ships began dredging material?and depositing it directly onto the seafloor until it breached the surface.?Basalt rocks were used to strengthen the dyke and it was raised to its final height with?sand and clay before being topped with grass to hold the surface material together.

Figure?2?Cross section, Afsluitdijk

Rising 7 metres above sea level and sitting 90 metres wide, the sea wall enabled the construction?of a causeway directly connecting North Holland with Friesland, drastically reducing travel?time between the two provinces.?While the site typically employed four-to-five thousand workers each day, the end of the?project saw 10,000 workers, 27 dredgers, 13 floating cranes and 132 barges work carefully?timed shifts to feverishly close the wall at low tides.

On 28 May 1932 the final gap in the dyke was sealed.?The?nederlands was?then?protected by a huge?Dam. Thezouden zij?became the?ijsselmeer?the?largest freshwater basin?in?Europe.

Figure?3?Early construction, Afsluitdijk

While many minor upgrades and improvements have been made to the dyke in the years since,?rising sea levels and an increase in the frequency and ferocity of storms has left the dyke in

need of major reinforcement - and 2019 saw the start of a major strengthening project.?While raising the height of the Afsluitdijk was considered, this method would use considerably?more material and add significant cost to the project.?Instead, engineers will strengthen the dyke by adding a layer of concrete reinforcing?blocks along its length,?resisting erosion and preventing breaches during rough storms.?Each of these blocks will be microchipped to ease the process of tracing and maintaining?them in the future.

Though passive sluice gates were built into the original structure to discharge water?from the lake twice-a-day during low tides, the difference in water level on either side?of the dyke at low tide is no longer enough to allow for sufficient drainage.?To ensure the lake isn’t flooded by the rivers that feed it, two of the largest pumping

stations in Europe will be built alongside the sluice gates.?The dyke’s locks will also be expanded to improve the passage of boats and the A7 causeway?will be widened.

When the Afsluitdijk was first built, little concern was given to the environment or local?habitats that the new structure would be dividing - and the dyke caused a large drop in local?fish populations.?To correct this and encourage biodiversity, a new fish migration river will be built connecting?the two habitats.

The sheer scale of this scheme means that over 500 architects, civil engineers and contractors?are all collaborating throughout the design and pre-construction phases - from different?geographic locations.?When the dyke was first constructed this simply wouldn’t have been possible. Design coordination?would have taken place in person with engineers comparing paper drawings and updating hand-drawn?information as changes were made.?The contrast with today couldn’t be more stark. To avoid mistakes which could cost?time and money if discovered out on the sea wall itself, the team are using Autodesk’s?BIM 360 Model Coordination platform.?Uploading their design models into a shared environment online enabled the team to coordinate?them and run automated clash detection - identifying any errors in the model before works commenced?on site.?This approach also gave the project team greater insight and understanding; improving quality?and speeding up design iterations.?The team also used Autodesk's Assemble software to track, manage and visualize quantity changes?between models, improving efficiency and cutting change management time in half.?The use of a common location online to share and store design information ensures that?engineers and contractors can always access and work from the latest information, further?cutting the risk of errors occurring during construction.?The clever reinforcement of this 1920s sea wall - enabled by 2020’s technology – is?likely to prove a powerful example to other countries in the years ahead as our planet?grapples with a changing climate.?Due to fully complete in 2023 and not require a further major upgrade until at least 2050,?the sea wall that saved a nation is likely to go on protecting it for decades to come.

Brace for Impact

To maintain the prosperity,?The Afsluitdijk,?has to remain strong enough to resist heavier storms, and higher sea levels arising from climate change. therefore in the next few years following 2021, the dam will be raised and reinforced by means of a new revetment level blocks called x-block plus. Locally produced and specially designed to have a wave retarding effect and allow quick recovery of natural Vegetation. Using 35 percent less concrete than traditional solutions, leading to 56 percent less co2 emissions. Rising water levels not only come from the oceans, but also from the rising rivers from the alps ending in the isomer. therefore europe's largest pumping

Stations being built to release vast amounts of water to the vansay in a smart and energy efficient way. By discharging whenever possible and pumping, when necessary, not only make sure people are protected but also enable nature to thrive to improve the migration of fish an ecological fish migration river will be constructed according to an idea of nature organizations. A permanent opening will be constructed with different current speeds in the migration river so that it will be possible for migrating fish to swim freely from fresh to salt water and vice versa.

Sharing insights and scalable solutions worldwide is crucial to prepare ourselves for the future.

The Delta Programme in The Netherlands

The Delta program commissioner appointed in 2010. On behalf of the minister of infrastructure and environment, devices measure to maintain safety and quality of life of a low-lying country in the future.

The delta commissioner works closely with provincial and municipal authorities, government, water regulatory authorities, companies, knowledge institutes, and civil society organizations.

All of these parties share knowledge with each other, so they can see and recognize problems solutions at all sides. That way, the delta commissioner ensures support for the measures needed. Through these approaches they can combine the measures with plans to ensure everyone as well as resources are protected and well prepared for future changes and ensures the Netherlands will remain safe habitable place despite challenges being faced there.

Figure?4?The Delta Programme in The Netherlands

That’s why dikes being raised, widened, and strengthened at crucial points. In some places, rivers are given more space by excavating their bottom, widening their banks, or rising dikes at their banks. Thus, allowing rivers to contain more fresh water in rain and ice melting seasons. In the Rhine north delta, continuous steps to ensure safety while storms hit the sea in combination with floods on the rivers. Important infrastructure, vital public services, and densely populated areas are extra well protected. Towns and villages are preparing for climate changes too, by providing sufficient water storage and greener in cities. Some 20% of the Netherlands economy depends on fresh water, measures and plan are placed to ensure water is retained and distributed more efficiently, so that shortages are less likely to occur.

Think Bigger, Sealing off the North Sea

It might be impossible to truly fathom the magnitude of the threat that global-mean sea level rise poses. However, conceptualizing the scale of the solutions required to protect ourselves against global-mean sea level rise, aids in our ability to acknowledge and understand the threat that sea level rise poses

Figure?5. Northern Europe Enclosure Dam could protect millions from rising waters. Source: The Royal Netherlands institute for Sea research

Sjoerd Groeskamp, an oceanographer at the?Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, has proposed propose the construction of a Northern European Enclosure Dam (NEED) that stretches between France, the United Kingdom and Norway to completely enclose the North Sea and protect millions from the consequences of rising sea levels as a result of global warming.

He said, “a dam between north Scotland and west Norway and another one between west France and south-west England are a possible solution”. NEED-south runs from France (Ploudalmézeau, ~25 km north from Brest) to England (the Lizard Heritage Coast, ~100 km west from Plymouth), measures 161 km in length, and has an average ocean depth of about 85 m and a maximum depth of 102 m. NEED-north runs from northern Scotland (John o’ Groats, ~200 km north of Aberdeen) via the Orkney Islands to the Isle of Noss (part of the Shetlands Islands) from where it crosses the North Sea to Bergen in Norway. Making use of the islands, the part from Scotland to the Isle of Noss is 145 km in length and averages 49 m in depth. The crossing from the Isle of Noss to Norway measures 331 km in length and has an average depth of 161 m, with a maximum depth of 321 m in the Norwegian Trench.

NEED may seem an overwhelming and unrealistic solution at first. However, our preliminary study suggests that NEED is potentially favorable financially, but also in scale, impacts and challenges compared to that of alternative solution, such as (managed) migrations and that of country-by-country protection efforts” Sjoerd Groeskamp added

Figure?6. proposed location of the Northern European Enclosure Dam (NEED; thick black lines) superimposed on the topography (Smith and Sandwell 1997).

experts agreed that the plans looked theoretically viable. Hannah Cloke, a professor of hydrology at the University of Reading said “If you look back hundreds and hundreds of years, then we’ve made some significant adaptations to our landscape, and the?Netherlands?is an example of that … We can, as humans, do amazing things”. “Good that we’re thinking outside the box. I think it is really important that we keep thinking about these ideas, because the future looks very scary. If you look back into the 1940s in the UK, the?Thames Barrier?probably seemed equally ridiculous” She added.

Figure?7?Areas of east and south-east London with a one-in-1,000 risk of tidal flooding without the Thames Barrier and associated tidal walls. Illustration: Environment Agency

Alternative solutions, Cost and feasability

Sjoerd Groeskamp compared NEED with other strategies to cope with SLR, Namely 1) no action, 2) protection, or 3) managed retreat.

• Based on monetary value alone, the cost of no action exceeds that of protection and managed retreat by a factor of 5–10. Add nonmonetary losses and associated possible social–political instabilities of no action is far beyond consideration.
• Managed retreat could potentially be less expensive than protection in certain locations and may theoretically be a good solution when implemented over long periods of time, well before a potential disaster occurs. Related migration can lead to national and international social–political instability, forcing decision-makers to shy away from spurring processes to facilitate managed retreat. Consequently, managed retreat is currently not widely implemented and arguably not a viable solution to timely address the threat of SLR.
• With economic and population growth in coastal areas, protection also becomes increasingly more worthwhile, while encouraging a proactive rather than reactive attitude to the threat of global-mean SLR. Current protection measures are implemented on national basis. Instead, NEED could offer a concerted effort to address protection of coastal zones across Europe against SLR.

Challenges

The largest constructed enclosure dams to date are the Afsluitdijk, Netherlands, and the Saemangeum Seawall, South Korea. Despite few decades in operation, ecological systems adaption and understanding of other effects of such structures still not enough. On monetary scale, and Based on existing projects, the scientists estimate the cost of building a so-called North Sea Enclosure Dyke at between €250bn and €500bn. Spread over 20 years, the annual cost to the 14 countries that would be protected by it would amount to just over 0.1% of their combined GDP” Groeskamp calculate

International experts agreed that the plans looked theoretically and technically viable.?

Sjoerd Groeskamp acknowledge that over time, NEED project would eventually turn much of the North Sea into a vast tide-free freshwater lake, radically changing its ecosystem. More challenges can be expressed as:

• River discharge.?Where a net freshwater discharge of 40,000 m3 per second into the basin. The discharge would lead to an annual SLR of 0.9 m within the enclosure and must therefore be pumped out into the Atlantic Ocean.
• Effects on the maritime industry.?Where The construction of NEED would significantly impact the maritime industry. The busiest trading ports in Europe (Rotterdam, Antwerp, Hamburg, Bremerhaven) lie within the enclosure.
• Remaining technical challenges.?Including sourcing, transport, and supply of roughly 50 to 60 billion tons of sand and building materials.
• Impact on ocean dynamics and the environment?

Turn down the heat

Turn down the heat report by the world bank reported in 2013 that recent greenhouse gas emissions and future emissions trends imply higher 21st century emission levels than previously projected. As a consequence, the likelihood of 4°C warming being reached or exceeded this century has increased, in the absence of near-term actions and further commitments to reduce emissions. This report reaffirms the International Energy Agency’s 2012 assessment that in the absence of further mitiga

tion action there is a 40 percent chance of warming exceeding 4°C by 2100 and a 10 percent chance of it exceeding 5°C in the same period.?

The 4°C scenario does not suggest that global mean temperatures would stabilize at this level. rather, emissions scenarios leading to such warming would very likely lead to further increases in both temperature and sea-level during the 22nd?century. Furthermore, even at present warming of 0.8°C above pre-industrial levels, the observed climate change impacts are serious and indicate how dramatically human activity can alter the natural environment upon which human life depends.?

The projected climate changes and impacts are derived from a combined approach involving a range of climate models?of varying complexity, including the state of the art Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5), semi-empirical modeling, the “Simple Climate Model” (SCM), the Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Induced Climate Change?

Figure?8?Projected sea-level rise and northern-hemisphere summer heat events over land in a 2°C World (upper panel) and a 4°C World (lower panel).

Potential for other mega-enclosures.

Around the world we have identified various other regions in which mega-enclosures such as NEED could serve as a solution to protect against regional SLR.

Figure?8?Various other regions in which mega-enclosures such as NEED could serve as a solution to regional sea level rise. These are the (a) Irish and Mediterranean Seas, (b) Red Sea, (c) Japanese Sea, and (d) Persian Gulf.

Mitigation now, or NEED later?

Solutions such as NEED are symptomatic treatments of the effects of climate change. The best solution will?always be treatment of the cause: human-caused climate change. If, however, climate change is left unmitigated, only solutions as impactful as NEED, or worse, will remain. Collaborative and sustainable global approach is essential for measures on such huge scales, either on action or on reaction sides. All Human nations either rise as one or fall individually. As humans embark on this collective journey, no one should be left behind.?

Hany Hussein Gad

UAE, September, 2021