South Florida is trying to keep its head above water and just a couple thousand miles away is a country — the Netherlands — that has been floating with the punches for centuries.
As part of a working visit to the United States, the King and Queen of the Netherlands ended their first day in Miami at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science.
His Majesty the King and Her Majesty Queen Máxima seemed in their element on Biscayne Bay's coast as they heard from some of the leading voices in Miami when it comes to climate-resilient infrastructure and environmental rehabilitation.
The royal event began Monday evening at the Rosenstiel School as soon as the Their Majesties arrived in their motorcade to the UM campus on Virginia Key. With a glimmering view of Biscayne Bay, speakers welcomed their Dutch visitors.
Miami-Dade County’s Mayor, Daniella Levine Cava sat in the front row before stepping up to the mic. She highlighted Miami’s history of dealing with disasters such as rebuilding after Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and the quick response to the Surfside Champlain Tower collapse just five years ago.
READ MORE: Resiliency goes Dutch: South Florida and Netherlands officials swap strategies on sea-level rise
“ Each painful event has only sharpened our ability to mobilize quickly, to coordinate across jurisdictions and to hear for our communities with passion and resilience,” Levine Cava said. “Emergency response requires an all-of-government approach.”
The focus of the event wasn’t just about responding after disaster strikes. It was also about building and preparing before something becomes a disaster.
“ Our challenge is to ensure that we can leverage our funding to advance multiple priorities simultaneously. We need a much bigger bang for our buck for every dollar that we must use wisely for cleaner air and water, safer streets and transit, restored ecosystems and stronger neighborhoods,” Levine Cava said.
Michael Simas, the president and CEO of the Florida Council of 100 spoke about how rising sea levels is not just an environmental problem for both nations.
“ Florida and the Netherlands share something fundamental. We're both shaped by water and increasingly we're both defined by how we manage it, but for Florida, this is not a distant challenge,” Simas said. “ Every dollar we fail to invest in preparedness costs more than $7 in loss of economic productivity. Every dollar not invested in flood protection can result in $25 in future loss. Those are not environmental statistics. Those are economic signals.”
The Netherlands has been dealing with these kinds of situations for a few centuries longer than the United States.
“ You're not just good at water management, you are the global standard setter for how a nation organizes itself around this challenge,” Simas explained. “ The Netherlands is such a natural partner.”
Although Their Majesties didn’t speak publicly themselves, their Minister of Infrastructure and Water Management, Vincent Karremans, pointed out that about one third of his country lies below sea level.
“ Our country is basically the result of high-end engineering and water management,” Karremans said. He noted that the North Sea Flood of 1953 — where almost 2,000 people died — marked the beginning of the Netherland’s ongoing commitment to strong water management.
“The Netherlands constructed one of the largest coastal protections in the world: the Delta Works, and to this day they remain a cornerstone of our flood defense,” he said.
If the Netherlands is so good at living with water, then what do they have to learn from Miami?
“ While we in the Netherlands excel at prevention, we have much to learn from Florida's agility,” Karremans said.
Exchanging ideas
Their Majesties were later split up and heard from some local Miami researchers and leaders as well as some from the Netherlands.
Levine Cava was part of His Royal Highness' group when they heard from Ad Hilhorst about the Dutch Float Dike. He demonstrated how as water levels rise, the walls are lifted up by the water to prevent flooding.
Her Majesty Queen Máxima and Karremans listened as Key Biscayne’s Chief Resiliency Officer, Roland Samimy, explained how Key Biscayne is using different methods to help the community understand infrastructure projects
“The question then becomes, ‘How do you visualize these complex challenges in a manner that people can easily understand and then feel comfortable about the big decisions that they're gonna make that they have to pay for over the next 20, 30, 40 years?'” Samimy said.
That question is why Kathryn Roscoe of the Dutch-based research company Deltares was right there next to him. Roscoe and Samimy explained how a modeling program called FloodAdapt from Deltares was used to map out how Key Biscayne is planning infrastructure to help with flooding.
“ We've zoned it out and then we can examine through FloodAdapt what you do, where, and what kind of impacts you have when under future conditions, current conditions, and then you can start using it to prioritize your next steps,” Samimy said.
Samimy and Roscoe said that plans to actually implement this infrastructure are still pending approval in the Village’s Council.
Throughout the evening there were more demonstrations about technology like tube barriers, box barriers, self closing flood barriers and the float dike Hilhorst had demonstrated.
All these methods from the Dutch use floodwater in some way to provide temporary barriers that rise as flooding increases. Many of these tools are things that the Netherlands has either invented itself or has spent the past few centuries working to improve.
Florida’s agility
The Dutch visitors then took a tour through the waterfront campus. They stopped by a workshop where local community leaders from Broward and Miami-Dade Counties talked about some of the current infrastructure South Florida is already working on — including the Southeast Florida watershed systems and disaster preparedness plans.
Then UM researchers showed Their Majesties what Florida is very familiar with: hurricane research.
Brian Haus, a professor and department chair of ocean sciences at UM, explained the SUSTAIN wind-wave tank to the royal couple.
The 75-foot-long acrylic chamber can hold simulated winds up to 155mph so that the effects on water can be monitored in a controlled 3D environment.
Andrew Baker, a professor of marine biology and ecology at UM, was part of the international collaboration to crossbreed coral and out-plant them in Key Biscayne earlier this year. He took Their Majesties through a tour of the Coral Reef Future’s lab where the researchers work on coral cross-breeding. Baker’s work in the lab is an example of how research can be used to help nature rebuild on its own with a nudge from mankind.
Florida and the Netherlands have acknowledged their similarities in the past.
The visit to the Rosenstiel school shines a spotlight on the things that Floridians can learn from centuries of work in the Netherlands, but also the new and innovative work happening here in Miami.
