Lankan experts study room-for-river and other flood mitigation systems in the Netherlands
A team of Sri Lankan experts has gone to the Netherlands to study flood mitigation systems there and acquire the Dutch expertise in flood management.
During the visit, facilitated by the Netherlands embassy in Colombo, the Sri Lankan experts made some crucial comparisons between the flash flood prevention and management in Sri Lanka and the Netherlands, an embassy statement said.
The Netherlands has mastered the art of flood management, as one third of the country lies below the sea level and such areas include some of the major cities protected by coastal dikes.
Pointing out that unlike the Netherlands, Sri Lanka does not share any international watersheds, the statement said the topography of Sri Lanka is well above mean sea level and there is scarcity of storm surge events and minimal tidal variation. Therefore, there is no requirement for coastal dikes such as the ones in the Netherlands.
"Despite these fundamental differences in the drainage systems of the two countries, there are many technical, institutional, conceptual water management approaches that Sri Lanka could absorb from the Netherlands,” the statement said.
Sri Lanka suffers from frequent flooding in the urban river basins such as Kelani, Kalu, Gin and Nilwala. The major problem Sri Lanka faces in flood management is that its flood plains have been severely encroached. In addition no basin investment plans or a proper spatial plan has yet been formulated or implemented.
The Sri Lankan delegation was able to observe some innovative temporary flood proofing methods which could be used during an extreme event to protect an important place. The widely adopted temporary flood proofing method in Sri Lanka is the traditional sand bag dike.
It is necessary for Sri Lanka to formulate a basin investment plan to learn where actually hard engineering solutions are needed and where the room-forriver concept could be applied. Although the room-for-river concept is sustainable and less vulnerable to climate change, it’s a challenge to implement that concept in some of the urban areas since those areas are already developed due to lack of a river basin plan, the statement said.
"It is always advisable to invest in mega scale flood mitigation plans after a proper economic analysis and room-forriver is always recommended to be applied wherever possible as it is the most sustainable and modern way of water management," the statement said.
In addition to the embassy, the other partners who sponsored the visit are the Netherlands Enterprise Agency and the Netherlands Water Partnership.