Economically Efficient Standards to Protect the Netherlands Against Flooding

Carel Eijgenraam (), Jarl Kind (), Carlijn Bak (), Ruud Brekelmans, Dick den Hertog (), Matthijs Duits (), Kees Roos (), Pieter Vermeer () and Wim Kuijken ()
Additional contact information
Carel Eijgenraam: CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, 2585JR The Hague, The Netherlands
Jarl Kind: Deltares, 3584CB Utrecht, The Netherlands
Carlijn Bak: Deltares, 3584CB Utrecht, The Netherlands
Dick den Hertog: Department of Econometrics and Operations Research, Tilburg University, 5000LE Tilburg, The Netherlands
Matthijs Duits: HKV Consultants, 8232JN Lelystad, The Netherlands
Kees Roos: Department of Information Systems and Algorithms, Delft University of Technology, 2628CD Delft, The Netherlands
Pieter Vermeer: Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, 2597JG The Hague, The Netherlands
Wim Kuijken: Delta Commissioner, 2511EG The Hague, The Netherlands

Interfaces, 2014, vol. 44, issue 1, 7-21

Abstract: In the Netherlands, flood protection is a matter of national survival. In 2008, the Second Delta Committee recommended increasing legal flood protection standards at least tenfold to compensate for population and economic growth since 1953; this recommendation would have required dike improvement investments estimated at 11.5 billion euro. Our research group was charged with developing efficient flood protection standards in a more objective way. We used cost-benefit analysis and mixed-integer nonlinear programming to demonstrate the efficiency of increasing the legal standards in three critical regions only. Monte Carlo analysis confirms the robustness of this recommendation. In 2012, the state secretary of the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment accepted our results as a basis for legislation. Compared to the earlier recommendation, this successful application of operations research yields both a highly significant increase in protection for these regions (in which two-thirds of the benefits of the proposed improvements accrue) and approximately 7.8 billion euro in cost savings. Our methods can also be used in decision making for other flood-prone areas worldwide.

Keywords: flood protection standards; cost-benefit analysis; MINLP; Monte Carlo analysis; decision support system (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/inte.2013.0721 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:orinte:v:44:y:2014:i:1:p:7-21

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Interfaces from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().