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Rotterdam harbor storm barrier closes for the first time in its history

en.wikipedia.org

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Re: Rotterdam harbor storm barrier closes for the first time in its history

#11

Post by mcv »

Someone wrote: post #9
OhNoNotAgain_99 wrote: post #6

FYI closing this gate has a huge economic impact and is left over to machines. The reasoning is a person living in the country would close this gate by fear of loosing families etc, here CODE decides when the time is right to close or stay open. It uses a lot of data to monitor and predict the weather.

> The reasoning is a person living in the country would close this gate by fear of loosing families I don’t think that’s true. The official argument is that human operation wouldn’t reach the required reliability level ( https://www.cs.vu.nl/~x/sil/sil.html : “The failure rate demands for this system were required to be 1:10000 for not closing when this was actually necessary, and 1:100000 for not opening the barrier…

> if the sea surge barrier does not reopen, the river discharge can lead to flooding from the inside.

Which makes it all the more unique that it closed, because there's a lot of water coming down the Rhine and Waal right now.

Rijkswaterstaat (who manages all of this) prepared for this by making more space for the river water to flow and flood in other directions.

Re: Rotterdam harbor storm barrier closes for the first time in its history

#13

Post by dendrite9 »

mcv wrote: post #11
Someone wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reasoning is a person living in the country would close this gate by fear of loosing families I don’t think that’s true. The official argument is that human operation wouldn’t reach the required reliability level ( https://www.cs.vu.nl/~x/sil/sil.html : “The failure rate demands for this system were required to be 1:10000 for not closing when this was actually necessary, and 1:100000 for not opening the barrier…

> if the sea surge barrier does not reopen, the river discharge can lead to flooding from the inside. Which makes it all the more unique that it closed, because there's a lot of water coming down the Rhine and Waal right now. Rijkswaterstaat (who manages all of this) prepared for this by making more space for the river water to flow and flood in other directions.

Do you know of any good resources to see the water levels in such places? I know of some sites for example in California reservoirs, or Snotel and river gauges in the US. But I imagine the information is spread differently in these watersheds.

Re: Rotterdam harbor storm barrier closes for the first time in its history

#14

Post by Someone »

dendrite9 wrote: post #13
mcv wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if the sea surge barrier does not reopen, the river discharge can lead to flooding from the inside. Which makes it all the more unique that it closed, because there's a lot of water coming down the Rhine and Waal right now. Rijkswaterstaat (who manages all of this) prepared for this by making more space for the river water to flow and flood in other directions.

Do you know of any good resources to see the water levels in such places? I know of some sites for example in California reservoirs, or Snotel and river gauges in the US. But I imagine the information is spread differently in these watersheds.

https://waterinfo.rws.nl/#/publiek/waterhoogte.

Re: Rotterdam harbor storm barrier closes for the first time in its history

#15

Post by move-on-by »

I read the article, and it says:

> During the evening of 8 November 2007, the barrier was closed due to a storm surge for the first time.

I also read the archived reference article [0]:

> In the Netherlands, maritime traffic in Rotterdam was halted as the authorities closed the giant Maeslant surge barrier, which guards the entrance to the largest port in Europe, for the first time since its construction in the 1990s

Is the title missing a [2007]? Or is there a current event happening as well that has been misidentified as the first occurrence of this?

* [0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20071109163913/http://news.bbc.c...

Re: Rotterdam harbor storm barrier closes for the first time in its history

#16

Post by landgenoot »

move-on-by wrote: post #15

I read the article, and it says: > During the evening of 8 November 2007, the barrier was closed due to a storm surge for the first time. I also read the archived reference article [0]: > In the Netherlands, maritime traffic in Rotterdam was halted as the authorities closed the giant Maeslant surge barrier, which guards the entrance to the largest port in Europe, for the first time since its construction in the 1990s…

This is the first time it closed automatically, because the sea level crossed the "3 meter above average"-threshold.

The other closes were "optional", mostly to check how it performed during a real storm.

Re: Rotterdam harbor storm barrier closes for the first time in its history

#17

Post by move-on-by »

landgenoot wrote: post #16
move-on-by wrote: post #15

I read the article, and it says: > During the evening of 8 November 2007, the barrier was closed due to a storm surge for the first time. I also read the archived reference article [0]: > In the Netherlands, maritime traffic in Rotterdam was halted as the authorities closed the giant Maeslant surge barrier, which guards the entrance to the largest port in Europe, for the first time since its construction in the 1990s…

This is the first time it closed automatically, because the sea level crossed the "3 meter above average"-threshold. The other closes were "optional", mostly to check how it performed during a real storm.

Thank you for the explanation. Turns out I stopped reading a little too early:

> In order to test the barrier in actual stormy conditions, the water level threshold at which the computer system would start the closing procedure was lowered from 3.0 m over NAP to 2.6 m, for the duration of the 2007 storm season. On 8 November 2007, a storm from the northwest hit the Dutch coast. A storm surge, high enough to start the barrier's closing procedure, occurred.

Re: Rotterdam harbor storm barrier closes for the first time in its history

#18

Post by nathan_phoenix »

saaaaaam wrote: post #8
nathan_phoenix wrote: post #4

Cool, but what does this mean?

It seems to indicate that the sea level is higher than any time since it was constructed. There are significant winter storms in Northern Europe right now, so it’s not unexpected. However this is apparently a “once in a decade” occurrence so either the storms are very bad or the sea levels are unexpectedly high.

Thanks!
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