Resilient Urban Deltas and Floodplains Summit – 4th November 2016
In conjunction with an official State Visit by Their Majesties the King and Queen of the Netherlands to the QUT Gardens Point Campus in Brisbane, a Water Summit was convened with a mix of Dutch and Queensland professionals to share experiences and insights on resilient urban deltas and floodplains. The royals started the day with a visit to the QUT Cube where water management in a global, Dutch and Australian perspective showed how collaboration between our countries is a great opportunity for the future. Visualisation tools were demonstrated on the engaging Cube screens. Also three future leaders meet the Royal couple as they shared their passion of being a part of a “myresilient future“.
Workshop 1 – Utilising flood risk management as a driver for building resilience
To initiate this workshop, an Australian-Queensland perspective on flood risk management from Graeme Milligan, General Manager Resilience and Recovery from the Queensland Reconstruction Authority and a Dutch/international perspective on water risks from Henk Ovink Special Envoy for International Water Affairs at Kingdom of the Netherlands set the scene.
Subsequently three pairs of pitches from a Dutch and an Australian perspective were presented on the topics of :
- Challenges of multi-level Governance
- Synergistic approaches of flood management with other objectives in a region
- Role of design thinking
The workshop participants then split into 3 groups and using a “world cafe” technique that provides a sequence of feedback, participants built various ideas of their own and off the view of the other groups as they progressed around the 3 topic tables.
Information on the Rebuild by Design program in partnership with the 100 Resilient Cities
Information of the Dutch Delta program
Jelte’s visual presentation and speech
Jelte’s recommended reading
- Overview of water management in the Netherlands
- Water Governance – Dutch Water Authority Model
- Building blocks for good water governance – detailed insight
- Delta Programme in the Netherlands
- Delta Programme – Programme Key Facts and Figures
- Multi-layered water safety – thesis report
- Zuiderzeeland Regional Water Authority
Challenges of multi-level Governance –
Jelte J. Bosma Strategy Consultant – Dutch Water Authorities and Mark Pascoe CEO International Water Centre
Paul’s presentation
Synergistic approaches of flood management with other objectives in a region
Paul McDonald Healthy Waterways and Catchments and Gert-Jan de Maagd – Knowledge Manager, Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment
Gert-Jan’s presentation
James’ presentation
Role of design thinking
James Davidson – Principal at James Davidson Architect and
Steven Slabbers – Managing Director Bosch Slabbers
Steven’s presentation and speech
Workshop 2 – Resilient cities are smart cities
In this workshop, local host Abel Immaraj – Manager Service Strategies, Queensland Urban Utilities teamed up with the Simones (Delft based S van Schijndel Director Geotechnical Engineering and Brisbane based S de Kleermaeker – Regional Coordination Oceania – both from Deltares) and Leanne Reichard – International Bushiness Director at Hydrologic to run this engaging workshop.
The team took advantage of the Smart Scanner as a tool to explore how water management measures can be implemented in a local neighborhood. Questions posed included, as a decision maker how close are you to influencing the solution and how does one best work with other decision makers. Plenty of healthy debate and table talk ensued and thanks to all the participants for be willing to explore what this might mean.
Scaling up the challenge to the City and regional scale was the next focus for discussion. Sharing the journey and experience from Rotterdam, Arnoud Molenaar – Chief Resilience Officer at City of Rotterdam gave a fascinating insight on what has happened in this major port City.
Scene setting presentation from Simone and Leanne
The Rotterdam journey to achieve resilience – Arnoud’s presentation
Additional summaries on Rotterdam
Rotterdam – connecting water with opportunities
Rotterdam resilience strategy – summary
Rotterdam resilience strategy – full report
Rotterdam climate change adaption strategy
The Lunch Wrap-Up of the two Workshops – Gardens Theater Foyer
After three hours of discussions the 60 participants came together for a well deserved lunch and a shared debrief of the workshop highlights.
Summaries of the 2 workshops highlighted how well water and flood risk management have evolved in both the Netherlands and Australia and that we can continue to learn from each other. Yes there are ongoing needs to be more effective and efficient and a number of ideas were proposed from the two workshops, namely:
The wrap of this Resilient Urban Deltas and Floodplains Summit had Henk Ovink and Piet Filet, Convenor – Flood Community of Practice, engage and reflect on what were highlights for the day. One discussion even explored the notion that if we have effective, seamless and well working governance that it could benefit from more visibility – healthy partnering and institutional arrangement need to be better acknowledge and appreciated – “they are like a marriage” – says Henk – “show them that we love them!!!”
In concluding on the Summit, guest for the day Major-General Richard Wilson – Chair of the Queensland Reconstruction Authority – shared his insights that the international and Dutch learning on resilience does have a place in Queensland. He reflected that the Authority and the “whole of Government” Resilience framework this agency is developing to underpin communities and their ability to proactively deal with future water challenges is well positioned to adapt from the good case studies from around the world.
This recent collaboartion between Dutch and Queensland/Australian parties initiated since the 2011 state-wide Queensland floods has evolved markedly and this Summit has certainly consolidated this AUSNED collaboartion. We will keep you posted as further steps are taken.
