Flood resilience and the resilience of hydraulic infrastructure recognised and rewarded with VIDI grants!
Congratulations to 4TU.RE member Maria Pregnolato who received a VIDI grant for her project: FlooDT - Digital Twin for flood-resilient infrastructure management.
Flooding impact on existing infrastructure calls for a new transformative approach to mitigate such consequences. Digital Twins (DTs) is a recent technology intended to establish active, timely connection between a physical object and its virtual representation for decision-making.
FlooDT pioneers a new framework that exploits DT to assess flood risk to critical infrastructure assets. Integrating multiple models (hydrological, hydraulic, structural) and data (historical, climate projections, sensor measurements), FlooDT will unprecedently improve prediction of flood-prone structures’ behaviour.
Two real-world assets demonstrate the potential of the methodological framework, which ultimately contributes to making our societies safer to floods.
Two VIDI grants for one research group
The occasion is made even more special by the fact that Davide Wüthrich, who is also part of the Hydraulic Structures and Flood Risk Group led by Bas Jonkman, has also received a VIDI grant. His project is called “Not-Just-Water: A multiphase and multiscale approach to strengthen the resilience of hydraulic infrastructure against extreme water events”
Extreme events like floods, storm surges, and tsunamis are increasing due to climate change, threatening critical infrastructure. Traditional design methods assume water acts alone, ignoring air’s influence on impact forces.
Not-Just-Water challenges this by investigating how air-water mixtures affect loads and structural response. By way of innovative experiments and numerical simulations, this project improves load predictions, refines design standards, and ensures laboratory findings can be applied to real-world scenarios.
Through collaborations with global experts and local authorities, the research strengthens flood protection strategies and informs international guidelines, making infrastructure safer and more resilient against future disasters.
Dutch Research Council NWO published the outcomes of the VIDI applications last week. Read more online.
Picture credit: Nazrin Babashova at Unsplash.