News & Agenda

Deltas and coastal plains are attractive places to live: fertile, flat, and open to the sea. These lowlands are, however, also vulnerable to climate change and sea-level rise. To better predict how deltas develop in the future, a thorough understanding is needed of biogeomorphology- how organisms, currents, waves, water, and sand discharge shape the delta-landscape. It was announced today that Δ-ENIGMA, a project focusing on this formation of the delta landscape, is one of the projects that will be funded from the National Roadmap for Large-Scale Research Infrastructure (LSRI) call of the Dutch Research Counsil (NWO).

On 21 November 2022, Delft University Fund signed a multi-year grant agreement with the Refreeze the Arctic Foundation. This will enable the development of innovative methods at TU Delft to modify clouds to combat global warming.

Nature Portfolio’s Scientific Data Journal published an article written by Sander Vos, Katharina Anders, Mieke Kuschnerus, Roderik Lindenbergh, Bernhard Höfle, Stefan Aarninkhof and Sierd de Vries, that describes a 6 month long hourly laser scan survey of the beach-dune system at Kijkduin, The Netherlands. The Netherlands is protected by about 250 kilometers of natural beach-dune systems and understanding the natural variability and resilience is of key importance to protect the Netherlands with the future climate change and sea level rise. The dataset provides information about storm responses and shoreward sand transport which is important for the resilience determination.

TU Delft is going to invest substantially in making its campus more sustainable. TU Delft is thus putting its previously published Sustainable TU Delft - vision, ambition & action plan into practice. Over the next few years, TU Delft will work towards a CO2-neutral, circular and climate-adaptive campus, with a focus on improving biodiversity and quality of life.

The biologically productive North Sea impacts the global climate through exchange of carbon and nutrients with the Atlantic Ocean. A Dutch consortium of scientists will investigate how big this role of the North Sea really is. Under the leadership of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), conduct a combination of field studies and computer model simulations will be conducted over the next four years to address this question. Models will be used to determine future effects of environmental and climate change on the North Sea, Atlantic Ocean and ultimately Earth’s climate. TU Delft's Peter Herman and Bram van Prooijen (Civil Engineering & Geoscience) are involved in the research.

NWO has awarded a research grant to a consortium led by Alex Kirched for the project PATH2ZERO: PAving THe way towards Zero-Emission and RObust inland shipping. PATH2ZERO aims to contribute to the transition to zero-emission inland shipping in cooperation with the inland shipping sector. The consortium of researchers, companies and social organisations will start developing sustainable business models and action perspectives.

De zeespiegelstijging langs de Nederlandse kust is aan het versnellen. Dat melden wetenschappers van de TU Delft in een nieuwe studie. Uit een uitgebreide analyse van de metingen van acht getijdestations langs de Nederlandse kust (onder meer die van Maassluis, Delfzijl en Vlissingen) blijkt dat de gemiddelde zeespiegelstijging – sinds midden jaren negentig – 2.7 ± 0.4* millimeter per jaar is. In vergelijking tot de zeventig jaar daarvoor is dat een significante stijging van 1.0 ± 0.5 mm/jaar.

Six days of storms in a row in the Netherlands, something that never happened before until last February. The number of storms is increasing and wind gusts are getting stronger. In combination with the rising sea level, this calls for innovative ways to protect our country from flooding.

"We are concerned about the impact of ship emissions on our climate. But we should also start worrying about the effect of climate change on shipping." This statement was made by professor Mark van Koningsveld in his inaugural speech. Held at TU Delft on Friday 10 June during the Port & Waterways symposium.

TU Delft and the Port of Rotterdam Authority are developing a new data platform for ground-retaining constructions. The data platform will make it easier to decide how and when ground-retaining structures, such as quay walls and sheet piling, need to be managed. On June 8, during the Port & Waterways conference, Egbert van der Wal, Director of Port Development, Stefan Aarninkhof, professor of hydraulic engineering (CEG), signed a 'Memorandum of Understanding' in which the joint effort and cooperation with among others DigiShape and SmartPort, was ratified.