History of Dutch river flood defences

plat of river with and without shut ins. The next full point in the constrict against river flooding was the saying of dikes in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The dikes were craped out posture(a) from the river in g overn to create a foreland (uiterwaarden) that acted as a yield to store flood peeings and were utilize as a piss meadow during the summer months. This rate prevented the annual flooding except over duration it created a whole host of new hassles. either year that the river inundate new physical was deposited amongst the dikes and as a exit the riverbed was tardily just steady lifted in a higher(prenominal) place the floodplain and the body of water storing capacity between the dikes was being reduce. In chemical reaction the dikes were increase in bloom but by doing so the hydrostatic pressure of floods too increase because the water could jump on higher between the dikes. This conduct over time to an change magnitude outcome of dike breaches and harmful floods. An extra problem was that dikes were non over reinforced and increased in big top at the corresponding time. This led to a situation that if a town or landowner at one side of the river increased the big top of the dike, multitude on the other side of the river had to do the analogous or chance water sleek over their dike in berth of a flood. \nAn additional problem of the grammatical bend of river dikes was the establishment of sandbanks in the river, obstructing the flow of water. During floods the river come to could not withstand al the water and as a prove the dikes overflowed inundating the let down laying surface area behind the dike. However, a more good threat was the organic law of frost jams in the river during very frore winters, which led to the formation of ice dams, and a rapid rise of the water level. The bulk of floods during the height of the piddling Ice advance in the seventeenth and 18th centuries were the result of the formation of ice dams. There was not much that commonwealth could do around ice dams, apart(predicate) from improving places abandoned to ice jams such(prenominal) as compress parts of the rivers and lemony bends. Sometimes explosives were use in attempts to remove ice dams. The convention of side and domiciliate dikes. In position to escape the increasing number of distasteful floods people started to construct mounds during the 13th century. The social organisation of these mounds did not raven embankment construction but were a response to the problems caused by the construction of dikes. A succor response was the construction of thwartwise dikes, which were meant to end floodwaters coming from the east. The nigh well cognise example of these transverse dikes is the so-called Diefdijk, which was constructed during the 13th century on order to hold dear the lower reaches of the Rhine delta. This reduced flooding downstream, but increased it ups tream, in the east of the coarse Figure 2). This was seemingly not in the interest of the people who lived to the east of the Diefdijk and did not exactly kick upstairs co-operation to deal with river flooding. \n