Summary of the Final Report Form Interreg IIIB North Sea Programme COMCOAST

Transcription

1 Summary of the Final Report Form Interreg IIIB North Sea Programme COMCOAST 14 th of July 2009 Prepared by Frans C. Hamer e.a summary of final report ComCoast 1

2 Summary of the Final Report of ComCoast 14 th of July 2009 Prepared by Frans C. Hamer e.a. Starting and co-operation. This Final Report presents the activities, results, contribution to programme aims and dissemination of the Interreg IIIB North Sea Programme project ComCoast. The ComCoast project has been an initiative of the Rijkswaterstaat, a Dutch organization which is part of the Ministry of Traffic, Public Works and Water Management. The project started mid 2004 and has been running till the end of Rijkswaterstaat has been the Lead Partner of ComCoast. The other partners are the Province of Zeeland (The Netherlands), the Province of Groningen (The Netherlands), Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg (University of Oldenburg, Germany), The Environment Agency (United Kingdom), Ministerie van de Vlaamse Gemeenschap (Belgium), the Danish Coastal Authority of the Ministry of Traffic (Kystdirektoratet, Denmark), the Municipality of Hulst (The Netherlands), the Waterboard of the Zeeuwse Eilanden (The Netherlands) and the Waterboard of Zeeuws Vlaanderen (The Netherlands). The aim of ComCoast and its approach. The ComCoast project aimed to work on the future approach on safety against flooding around the North Sea. ComCoast aimed to achieve a more gradual transition zone from sea to land, creating benefits for the wider coastal community and environment. In this approach safety and spatial use in the coastal defence zone are combined. From this approach the name of the project originates: Combined functions in Coastal defence zones, which has been abbreviated to ComCoast. ComCoast studied and investigated the following questions: - Where and when would work this concept well? - Which costs and benefits are to distinguish and how to deal with socio-economic issues? - Which technical aspects appear and how to solve those? - How to involve stakeholders and general public in developing this new approach? The questions have been dealt within four work packages. Within the project much attention has been paid to practice by developing pilot sites. To stimulate the uniformity and transnational exchange of knowledge and to keep project control the pilot sites has been brought together under work package no. 5. Overall project management and dissemination has been organized in work package no 6. The ComCoast output, the results and impact. The aim to show and to introduce the ComCoast approach has been perfectly well succeeded by producing the planned reports, presenting the concept and results at dozens of seminars and conferences, involving the public and experts ánd showing summary of final report ComCoast 2

3 important technical innovations in real scale tests on an embankment and applying the concept at pilot sites. Overall we encountered much more media attention and publicity than expected at the start of the project. The project achieved the desired outputs, results and impacts. The output and results have been clustered in a practical and very accessible way and have been presented at the website The project has been realized according to the Application Form. Additionally, extra outputs have been realized by paying attention to extra pilot sites. Additional to the pilots described in the Application Form the partners of ComCoast also worked on the pilot site Rømø in Denmark. Furthermore ComCoast contributed to the design study of the Hondsbossche and Pettemer Sea Defence on special request of the Province of Noord-Holland in The Netherlands. The concept of ComCoast appeared to be one of the possible alternatives for creating more safety in the specific area. One of the innovative and unique elements has been the real scale wave overtopping tests to show the resistance of the actual Dutch embankments against wave overtopping. This specific element in dike design has been a discussion for a long time. Testing has been possible only at laboratory scale so far. But because of the invention of a real time wave-overtopping simulator, which can be placed on top of a real dike, this kind of testing could be performed in practice. The tests have been carried out successfully and under significant media attention. The wave overtopping resistance appeared to be much more than is accounted for at present. This is important to know to further elaborate the ComCoast concept of more gradual transition zones in coastal protection in the future. The tests will be repeated under the responsibility of the Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management at three other locations in The Netherlands in 2008 and Climate change and consequences for safety against flooding along the North Sea coast have been a top priority in the participating countries. In The Netherlands a national committee has been installed by the minister of Transport, Public Works and Water Management to propose recommendations on short-term and long-term measures adapting to climate change. The committee will present their results in autumn Preliminary results show the attention for ComCoast alike solutions, avoiding the traditional approach of simply raising dike crest levels everywhere. Lots of initiatives contributed to this change of thinking of course, but the ComCoast project certainly put in a word. Seven Dutch Public Authorities involved have signed a political agreement for the realization of the area of Perkpolder in the South West of The Netherlands on the 19 th of December The Perkpolder area was one of the ComCoast pilots in which, together with other organizations and authorities, the ComCoast concept has been worked out. The contribution of ComCoast to the development plan of this area has been important for this political agreement. The project still has to follow the various steps according the legal spatial planning procedures, which will take approximately 2 years. The investments related to this realization will be in the order of 100 million Euros. In the United Kingdom ComCoast outputs have been used in the Strategic Policy Developoment. Positive results at the pilot site Abbotts Hall helped to get landowners more involved in creating multifunctional coastal defence zones summary of final report ComCoast 3

4 Instead of one traditional final conference the ComCoast group organised final events in each country to create the best possible impact. The events have been organized to fit best to the regional demands. In the United Kingdom a conference has been organized at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. Sixty interested parties were welcomed by the Eastern Area Flood Defence Manager of the Environment Agency. In Germany, Denmark and Belgium smaller groups met to evaluate the results and their impact for the local circumstances. In The Netherlands final events have been organized in the Province of Zeeland and the Province of Groningen. In the Province of Zeeland safety is a hot issue, people still remember the enormous flood disaster of 1953 very well. New ideas about embankments and safety are still hard to discuss. The chairman of the Waterboard in Zeeland (Waterboard Zeeuwse Eilanden) congratulated the ComCoast group with their contribution to the necessary discussion and cooperation in between all relevant stakeholders in this field. In Groningen the ComCoast results have been thankfully used in the preparation towards a new coastal vision for that region. In the next two years the ComCoast results will be kept very available by means of a website ( ). The complete inventory of all relevant reports and ComCoast information have been presented in a logical way, from which easily downloads can be drawn. The stakeholders interest and involvement. The multi-disciplinary approach of the ComCoast project, combining safety against flooding, land-use and economic development encouraged stakeholders to participate. Bringing in practice and experiences from other countries also contributed to a high rate of attention. Experiencing the different approaches of each country is useful. In The Netherlands safety has been organized by law for instance. In this way the Dutch national and regional authorities are obliged to secure a certain level of safety, so there is no specific incentive for instance for the farmers to take measures or to cooperate in finding other solutions themselves. In case the authorities fail to meet with their obligations, people will get compensation. While in the UK farmers have been successfully involved in how to deal with sea level rise and safety measures, just because they do not have any other compensation or alternative. Additionally it proofed to be very important to encourage the relevant stakeholders, informal partners and target groups by presenting a sound approach of the problem and subsequently of the project. Coming up with the necessary theoretical studies as well as practice and real scale tests. Clearly indicating and showing what is in for each stakeholder and target group. ComCoast as one of the EU-Interreg projects ComCoast organized various meetings with related EU-Interreg projects to exchange views and results. EU-Interreg projects ComCoast interacted with projects Flows, Escape, Comrisk, Safecoast and Chain of Safety. Cooperation took place by contacts between project team members on project related topics, contributing to conferences of each other, producing films and organizing joint visits to pilot sites summary of final report ComCoast 4

5 Contacts will continue in between the underlying partner organisations, while the Interreg projects as such are to be finalized within a limited period. We experienced that the projects deal with more or less the same subjects, but in fact work at complementary work fields. Above all ComCoast showed to be complementary by choosing to work as much as possible at the pilot sites and so in practice, while most of the other projects focussed a bit more on theory, strategy and policy. The advantage of a transnational project approach. In the beginning of the project it has been hard to start a well balanced co-operation and transnational discussion about the way how to develop ComCoast. Although the Application Form has been written relatively clear, it took some time to tune the different views and understanding of the representatives of each country. However in general we encountered little by little a wider and more interested group of organisations and people in every participating country, once the targets of ComCoast became more clear. The specific input of each country finally resulted in the right mix of a real trans-national and European project. The UK s focus was the combination of functions in the coastal zone, the social economic valuation and public participation; the German s focus was spatial reconnaissance, the Dutch focus was the conceptual approach combining safety and spatial planning/land use and exploring technical solutions, while the Danish contributed with practical experience on public participation and inquiries and the Belgians brought in their experiences with the Scheldt project and related safety improvements. This mix of input made the ComCoast project interesting for the people around. These interest and attention would not have been experienced with only a national approach. To support this trans-national approach the project structure has been specifically designed to work trans-nationally. Work Packages existed of various representatives of different organisations and participating countries. Planning and expenditures The project has been realized according to schedule, so no major delays have been encountered. Starting up the project has been a bit more time consuming for most of the partners and some activities have been confronted with some unforeseen complications. The Social, Economic and Ecologic Study of the pilot Breebaart (work package 2) has been delayed due to the consuming European tendering procedure. However in the end this delay did not influence the overall planning of the project. Within the framework of work package 3 the real scale wave overtopping field tests have been delayed. Tests have taken place in February/March 2007 instead of November 2006 because it appeared to be better to test the grass revetment of the dike in worst conditions (grass conditions are worst at the end of the winter period). The field tests have been a tremendous success and the delay did not have any further implications for the overall planning of the project. The overall expenditures of the project appeared to be well over 98% of its budgetted amounts for realising the output and results as presented in the original Application Form summary of final report ComCoast 5