1. Communities and Institutions for Flood Resilience
Turning Tides?
Turning Tides?
Translating histories into strategies: an
integrated approach for studying Deltas

2. Introduction
• WOTRO-Integrated Programme (IP) “Communities and
institutions for flood resilience: Enhancing knowledge
and capacity to manage flood risk in the Bangladeshi
and Dutch Deltas”
• Partners: IWFM-
BUET, WARPO, CEGIS, IWM, UST, BWDB, Dhaka Ahsania
Mission, KU, KUET
• Wageningen University (Irrigation and Water
Engineering group and Disaster Studies
group), UNESCO-IHE (Flood Resilience
Group), Netherlands Environmental Assessment
Agency (PBL), Dura Vermeer, University of
California, Berkeley, City of Dordrecht, Red Cross/Red
Crescent Climate Centre

3. Programme Objectives
• Assess and compare the strategies and policies of
governments, professionals and communities to
reduce flood risk and vulnerability in the
Bangladeshi and Dutch Deltas
• Contribute to poverty reduction through the
strengthening of institutional and community
capacities to manage moderate floods and
increase resilience to extreme floods
• Mutual learning and international collaboration

4. Guiding Questions
• What can be learnt from the similarities and
differences between the approaches of the two
countries?
• Which (new) tools, methods and approaches will:
– Increase resilience to floods?
– Improve the effectiveness of flood management and
disaster preparedness?
– Lead to a better embedding of new knowledge and
action with local stakeholders?

5. PhD Research
• Four PhD projects to analyze the strategies and
policies to reduce flood risks and vulnerabilities
• Active exchange and joint methodology
development
– PhD 1: delta knowledge agendas in NL and BGD
– PhD 2: urban flood risk management in BGD and NL
– PhD 3: rural flooding and CCA in BGD and NL
– PhD 4: new flood and disaster management
approaches: globally and comparison between the
two deltas
• Topic 5: mutual learning and collaboration

6. strengthening of institutional and
community capacities
strategies to reduce flood risks
and vulnerabilities
(new) tools, methods and
approaches

7. Resilience and Mutual Learning
• How are we defining resilience?
– The capacity to bounce back
– The strategy to deal with uncertainty as opposed to
optimization (fine for static conditions)
– More work needed on how we apply this concept in the
two (SW) deltas, how to operationalize it
• Mutual learning and comparative research between
the two (SW) deltas and international collaboration
between Bangladesh and the Netherlands
• Promotes arriving at collective understandings
between scientists, policy-makers, water users,
communities and the public

8. Stuck in a bathtub
• River flooding turns into pluvial flooding through
embankment construction
• Polders and embanked cities are like bathtubs
• Watershed moments, adaptation tipping points /
thresholds, turning the tide ?
• An infrastructural solution to today’s problems may
well create tomorrow’s problems (technological
entrapment, infrastructure legacies)
• A portfolio of “no-regret” responses to managing flood
risk, that increase resilience and flexibility in the face of
an uncertain future

10. Today’s Programme
• Morning: PhD presentations and discussion
• Afternoon: Presentations on SW Delta
• Four parallel sessions with PhDs to validate
their research plans
• Plenary wrap-up: the Dutch-Bangla Delta
connection