“Flooding is our most common natural disaster concern. It affects all our states and areas.  There are already many flood risk management tools but, in this case, we wanted to emphasise compound flooding, taking into account the various risks that can cause floods and linking that understanding to key planning and decision-making for flood risk management. And we wanted to make sure the solutions were built from the perspective of the end user so that we would deliver tools that work.”

“Clearly, the Dutch, and particularly the experts at Deltares, have extensive experience and a long history of conducting research and developing tools related to flood risk. We’d already collaborated with Deltares in the past and knew the institute had other open-source solutions, like the Delft3D tools, which are grounded in solid, evidence-based science. Given the fact we’re both interested in the same scientific issues and in creating practice-driven, open-access tools, this was a great opportunity to partner.”

“We’ll conduct final workshops in the pilot area and hold presentations at flood risk conferences nationwide. We’re also working with Deltares to present the project results on the Deltares website so that users can download the tool easily and freely, including user and technical documentation explaining the technology. And we’re not just making it available to the United States but also to an international audience.”

“At the moment, we’re still unpacking the feedback from Charleston. The number of end users keeps growing. Once we have a comprehensive understanding of where end users think additions are needed, we’ll discuss them with our Dutch partners. We’ll also continue working on communicating the model outputs in a way that makes them easy to understand. The final step is linking that to potential mitigation measures like improving infrastructure or removing high-risk developments. We see our collaboration with Deltares as an enduring, strategic partnership that will continue after this project. Flood risk remains a top concern. There are still many unanswered questions and challenges, both scientifically and technically.”