Dutch Dialogues

A Look at the Dutch Dialogues   

By: Brad Hoepfner

So while I have been doing research on different types of disasters and shelters that tend to sprout up after the disaster has struck a few notions of controlling the water have made themselves prevalent.  Professor Anz keeps hounding me on the Dutch and how they are the extreme masters of this topic of controlling water. So I finally looked into it and they have some great ideas and bring forth other great concepts that people have looked at around the globe as well as looking at the failures.

One big problem the dialogues focus on is the levees in the U.S. in general. Obviously we have seen the failures during hurricane Katrina, but even here in Illinois we have many homes within flood planes that are protected by levees guaranteed to stand for a certain number of years. So questions should begin to form, for instance, why do we even build within these flood planes? Do we simply enjoy living on flat ground? The amount of money it takes to build on sloping or higher ground is no more expensive than building on a flat piece of land.

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This image from the Dutch Dialogues shows us how an area of a large city could control large amounts of unwanted water, where the necessary levees are needed, and it gives us an idea of how many pump stations we may need to be able to move the water out of harm’s way.

 After looking deeply into these Dutch dialogues my thesis seems to be starting to shift towards the idea of controlling flood planes, taking a second look at levees, homes within these flood planes, and creating a home or a device that could allow for survival within. Site selection will still be an issue, but it has allowed me to look directly at the Mississippi river and allows me to work on a regional issue of southern Illinois.

http://dutchdialogues.com/ is a great source for most water control needs and they even display student efforts and thoughts.