Dutch scientists create £20m tsunami generator to save Holland from floods
05:29PM Tue 15 Sep, 2015
Dutch scientists have created the world's biggest man-made wave as part of a multi-million pound project aimed at helping to save the low-lying country from devastating floods.
The highest artificial wave generated so far is just over 5 metres but engineers are hoping to produce even larger ones at the newly-completed 26million euro facility.
Holding 9 million litres of water, pumped in from a reservoir at 1,000 litres a second, the Delta Flume produces waves by pushing water back and forth against a 10m-high steel wall, with scientists able to create a range of conditions from choppy waters, to rough seas and even a single tsunami wave.
This is sent along a narrow 300m-long tank and met by a variety of flood-defence measures, from dykes, dunes, dams and barriers.
The aim is to see how each piece of technology deals with the size of the wave thrown at it.
Speaking to the BBC's science correspondent Rebecca Morelle, coastal engineer Dr Bas Hofland said: 'Yesterday, we had a wave of over 5m, but we're hoping to get some larger ones.'
Netherlands is seen as a world leader in flood management technologies, having adopted techniques such as amphibious homes, building homes on stilts and flooding some areas of land to protect others.
The reason the country is so proactive is because two-thirds of the land is at risk from flooding. The low-lying country has been fighting back water for more than a thousand years when farmers first built dikes to protect their land.
In 1953, nearly 2,000 people were killed when a high tide and storm surge in the North Sea led to 1,500 sq km of land being flooded.
BBC
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