Building resilience in New Orleans

Written by Jeroen Rijke Wednesday, 04 April 2012 08:07 - Last Updated Wednesday, 04 April 2012 08:11

Seven years after Katrina, New Orleans is in the process of identifying and fostering the implementation of innovative and sustainable strategies to reduce New Orleans' and South Louisiana's vulnerability to flooding. A Coastal Master Plan is being developed as a response to coastal erosion that is estimated to cause 1750 square miles land losses (home to 210.000 people) over the next 50 years. Furthermore, various activities are being undertaken to enhance the communities shelter and evacuation capacity and in case of floods. Between 15 and 17 March 2012, an international delegation of Dutch, French and Taiwanese experts in water management from research and the public and private sector participated in the Building Resilience Workshop III to discuss ways to make New Orleans more resilient to floods. Prominent topics that were discussed were multi-level governance using experiences from the Room for the River programme and the multi-level safety approach of preventing floods, mitigating flood damage and evacuation using newly developed scientific knowledge from the EU FP7 project FloodProBE. The Flood Resilience Group played an important role in this workshop, delivering three key note

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Building resilience in New Orleans

Written by Jeroen Rijke Wednesday, 04 April 2012 08:07 - Last Updated Wednesday, 04 April 2012 08:11

speeches and participating in several panel discussions with their counterparts from the US. Sebastiaan van Herk delivered a key note speech about social learning for establishing the Dutch multi-level safety approach. Jeroen Rijkes key note discussed the effectiveness of different governance approaches to establish change and increase adaptive capacity. In the closing conference speech, Chris Zevenbergen presented on the cost effectiveness of flood proofing technologies. More information: j.rijke@unesco-ihe.org , www.resilienceworkshop.org

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