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Summary of case studies325their low-lying region. Over half of the land area of TheNetherlands is below sea level, and in the south-westernpart lies the marshy delta of three big rivers: the Rhine,Meuse and Scheldt. Although this geography provides fertilesoil and easy access to the seas and waterways, these areasare also subject to the dangers of river flooding and of theebb and flow of the sea.Creative innovation and the adaptation of newtechnologies for water management have enabled the Dutchto successfully mitigate risk, prospering despite the naturalhazards posed by the surrounding waters. To protectthemselves against flood risks, the Dutch have built an elaboratesystem of dikes and drainage mechanisms. The earliestforms of water management came about in the 12th centuryas the Dutch reclaimed, or drained and elevated, landcovered by water. Although the vulnerability to flooding ofThe Netherland’s most important settlements and infrastructuremade water management of paramount importance, itwas not until the formation of the national water authority,the Rijkswaterstaat, during the late 18th century that watermanagement was handled by a structured governmentauthority. Prior to this time, the task of building dikes andwaterways was left largely to individual villages and communities.Local reclamation efforts, at least until the 16thcentury, consisted of simple technologies, such as buildingdwelling mounds (higher ground) and basic dikes and poldersystems to artificially manage the water flow. Technicalinnovation, fuelled mainly by trial and error, nonethelessoccurred during this time as water management and landreclamation efforts grew to accommodate increased transportationand agricultural demands.By the late 1930s and early 1940s, there was ongoingresearch to determine the strength of the next big stormsurge and to establish the country’s greatest vulnerabilities.The predictions revealed that the barriers in place at thetime would not be sufficient and that greater protectionswould be necessary. These warnings went unheeded. Withthe disastrous flooding of 1916 having occurred decadesearlier, the attention of the government and greater publicwas instead devoted to rebuilding the dikes that had beendestroyed during World War II. On 1 February 1953, a strongstorm in the North Sea, coupled with exceptionally highspring tides, led to a breach of the dikes protecting thesouthwest part of the country. The resulting flooding killed1835 people. Approximately 200,000 hectares of land(535,575 acres) were flooded, and 26,000 homes and 300farms were destroyed. The total damage amounted to about5 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), adevastating blow to a nation recovering from World War II.The 1953 flooding was one of the worst disasters everto strike The Netherlands, and was the result both of anunusually powerful storm and an inability to conceive andprepare for it. The storm was of the strength and severityseen only once every 500 years. The Dutch infrastructurewas simply not built in anticipation of such a fierce storm.The government deemed the risk too remote to justify theenormous expense required to raise and strengthen the thenexisting dikes. Once the storm surge reached TheNetherlands, the elaborate system of dikes and pumps gaveway. Entire villages were submerged as water cascaded overthe tops of the dikes. In all, 80 breaches were recorded,some of them 180 metres wide. It was later found that manykilometres of dikes needed serious repair or replacement.Just as the Dutch government failed to imagine a stormstrong enough to overpower the dikes, so too did the Dutchpeople, whose unquestioning trust in The Netherlandswaterways authority and the dikes led to low levels ofpreparedness for flooding and the inability to communicatethe dangers either before or during the flooding.The Delta Commission was formed shortly after thefloods to determine a course of action. The commission putforth the Delta Act, passed by the government in 1957,which proposed shortening the coastline and called for theconstruction of a series of primary and secondary dams tostrengthen flood defences. The Delta Project was the firstcomprehensive approach designed to address the vulnerabilitiesof the nation. The scope and technological vision of theproject rank it among the greatest engineering feats everaccomplished by any country. There were two major technologicalaccomplishments of this project. The first was theEastern Scheldt Dam, which is one of the most highlyregarded water management structures in the country. Theconstruction of the dam was met with public protests overnegative ecological consequences; but these were resolvedthrough a willingness to incorporate a dialogue on theprocess surrounding the project. The second major technologicalaccomplishment of the Delta Project was theMaeslant Barrier. Like the Eastern Scheldt Dam, theMaeslant Barrier was a technological breakthrough, capableof mitigating flooding during storms without hinderingRotterdam’s commercial linkages to the North Sea.Whereas the Delta Project aimed to control thewaters with human-made barriers, new policies were implementedduring the late 1990s that prioritized reducing risksrather than controlling and taming the rivers, as had beendone in the past. Risks and vulnerabilities had increased overthe years due to weakened river barriers and changesbrought by urbanization in adjacent areas. The Netherlandsgovernment also realized that cooperation with countriesupstream was essential in preserving their own cities andinterests.The Dutch case demonstrates, first and foremost, anongoing process of institutional learning. The flood of 1953came from the storm at sea, but later flooding during the1990s was the result of river levels rising inland. The historyof Dutch water management reflects the realization that thesecurity of Dutch cities is contingent upon the managementof ecological processes in the hinterlands (see also Box8.10).Implementing a national response plan forHurricane Katrina in New Orleans, USOn 29 August 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated NewOrleans and much of the Gulf Coast of the US. The hurricaneunleashed its fury on the Gulf Coast, sustainingmaximum wind speeds of up to 195 kilometres per hour anda storm-eye radius of 48 kilometres. Although the storm lost