New Dutch Technology Makes Dikes and Levees Safer Throughout The World (Delft/Leidschendam, 19 May) - New Dutch technology will soon make it possible to calculate the strength of levees almost automatically, anywhere in the world. Weak spots can be traced up to 100 times faster, reducing the risk of flooding. The engineering company Fugro and the knowledge institute Deltares proved the efficacy of REALTM (Rapid Engineering Assessment of Levees) earlier this year in a pilot project in the United States. Throughout the world an average of 25 dikes and levees fail every year, claiming about 750 lives and causing damage worth billions of Euros. The flooding in New Orleans in 2005 was also caused by a levee failure. The probability of this type of disaster is still on the increase: sea levels are rising and the population is increasing exponentially in vulnerable deltas, like in Asia and South America. Many of these dikes are built to much lower safety standards than in The Netherlands - so dike failures and floods are increasingly probable. ''We lack precise information about the height and strength of hundreds of thousands of kilometres of dikes and levees throughout the world'', says Jos Maccabiani, the Water Defences project manager at Deltares. ''That means it's not clear which sections require strengthening, and to what extent. Every dike is as strong as its weakest point so you need a complete analysis of every component of the water defences. This requires extremely labour-intensive processing of large amounts of data. Mapping dikes completely therefore often takes years.'' The new Dutch technology processes those data between 60 and 100 times faster than current systems, as was demonstrated earlier this year during the pilot study in the United States. But REALTM has another unique quality, says Martin van der Meer, the Technical Director at Fugro Water Services: ''During that pilot study, we mapped out a levee measuring 20 kilometres in just one week. And once the data had been imported, we could analyse the entire system again in different conditions with just one press of a button. That's plain impossible with the traditional approach; you just have to start all over again.'' 
REALTM is a GIS based automated levee assessment method which enables Fugro batch processing of different failure mechanisms using sophisticated algorithms, surface and subsurface models. The models consist of different types of data (e.g. LiDAR, HEM, boreholes, CPT's and water levels). 
REALTM also enables multi water level analyses, such as high event scenarios. This figure/image illustrates the outcome of a risk assessment and necessary requirements in case of a high water level event within a period of 10 years. 
This figure/image illustrates the outcome of a risk assessment and necessary requirements in case of a high water level event within a period of 200 years. In the new system, Fugro and Deltares combine information about the surface and the subsurface with advanced models that can be used to process and interpret the data rapidly. In this way, immediate assessment of weak areas can be realised and subsequent effective treatment made possible.
Fugro is the global market leader in the collection of data about the earth's surface; the knowledge institute Deltares is a pioneer when it comes to modelling delta areas, water and soil. | 
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