WATERFRONT PLANNING & RESILIENCE: Dealing with rising sea-levels
Globetrotter Piet Dircke has an expansive view of water management and flood protection. As the Global Leader for Water Management at Arcadis, he has worked on coastal protection projects around the world, including those in his homeland, the Netherlands, as well as in numerous Asia Pacific countries and in the United States. Since Hurricane Katrina, he has advised American projects dealing with flood protection and water management in New Orleans, San Francisco, Miami, Los Angeles, and New York. After Hurricane Sandy caused unprecedented damage ($19 billion in damages in Manhattan alone), the US Department of Housing and Urban Development launched the Rebuild by Design competition, and Arcadis was among those selected to design resilient infrastructure in New York City. Arcadis’s winning design, Big U, envisioned a multi-project protective system around Lower Manhattan. Today, the East Coast Resiliency Project, Phase 1 of the Big U, is underway. As the Waterfront Conference, for which Arcadis is the premier sponsor, approaches, we were able to ask Piet about coastal protection here and around the world.
Source: Waterwire (29 April 2017), a publication of the Waterfront Alliance of Greater New York
