Emergency Management for Flood Defences – Operations in Practice
- Start:
- End:
- Course fee: € 1000 excl. VAT
- Application deadline:
This short course promotes practical use of the Handbook on Emergency Management for Flood Defences while creating learning and networking opportunities for professionals from government, industry and academia. The course serves as the second component of a two-part series, while also offering value as a stand-alone short course.
For whom?
Professionals and academics active in flood risk and emergency management (coastal, river and estuarine managers and engineers, flood defence owners, civil/hydraulic/geotechnical engineers, crisis managers, crisis communicators, flood forecasters, patrollers / inspectors, responders, crisis planners, rescue & relief).
Prerequisites
none
Learning objectives
- Understanding defences performance to prevent failures during disastrous events
- Critically evaluate faults in the preparedness and response to crisis and identify improvements for future events
- Identify and prioritize the use of permanent and temporary structural flood defences
- Demonstrate the ability to implement and coordinate emergency measures and crisis response to floods
- Inspecting and assessing the correct functioning of the structural and non structural defences before an event
In December 2024, the International Handbook on Emergency Management for Flood Defences was launched by key partners including Rijkswaterstaat (The Netherlands), the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USA), the Environment Agency (England), and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Tourism (Japan), with contributions from 16 additional organisations.
As no comprehensive training course currently exists on this topic, this short course aims to fill this gap by promoting practical use of the Handbook while creating learning and networking opportunities for professionals from government, industry and academia.
IHE Delft will host the course, offering a comprehensive programme of lectures, work sessions, field visits and networking opportunities along the topics and with authors from the Handbook.
Programme
PART 2 – Operations in practice
Goal: Operational knowledge for crisis management.
- Day 6 – Understanding Defence Performance and Failure Mechanisms
- Day 7 – Measures, assessing and inspecting
- Day 8 – Event & Crisis Response Management (including Early warning)
- Day 9 – Field visits
- Day 10 – Protocols, communication, logistics and learning (+certificate ceremony)
Topics
- Assessing and inspecting
Forecasts, warnings, action triggers and thresholds, regular inspections, damages, staffing, equipment - Understanding the problem
Understanding of the performance of flood defences, including failure mechanisms and fragility curves - Techniques for emergency measures
Descriptions of techniques (e,g. sandbags and other barriers) that can be employed to deliver measures as an emergency response - Selecting and designing measures
Measures that can be implemented to either removing the threat of failure or provide an enhanced flood defence. - Logistics and implementation
Organisation, availability, needs, timing, constraints, planning, software and hardware related to communication, navigation and transportation, remote sensing, aerial surveillance - Health, safety and wellbeing
PPE, protocols, standards - Understanding where it can go wrong
Fault tree analyses, understanding the process, human factor
Lecturers
Lecturers include authors from the Handbook or other representatives from the relevant contributing organizations and lectures from IHE Delft. Additional lecturers could be invited, for example from the Interreg programme BONSAI, where Rijkswaterstaat is one of the key partners. It is intended to have each day/topic be jointly set up by IHE Delft/external.
Application process
Please note that if you follow both this course as well as part 1 of the series, you will pay a reduced tuition fee of €1500 for both courses.
If you are interested in attending this short course, please send an e-mail to: shortcourseregistration@un-ihe.org
Course Coordinator
Fredrik Huthoff
Associate Professor of Hydraulic Engineering
