Can ecological structures like mangroves save a town from flooding as well as any dike?

In 2012, in Indonesia, a village was protected from coastal flooding by their mangroves, reinforcing a change in thinking about our hydraulic engineering structures.  Welcome to this first week of the adventure on Building with Nature. We will be exploring the concept ‘Building with Nature’, and how this can change the way hydraulic engineers design.  The first video clip by Prof. Jill Slinger deals with this worldwide trend.

Next, we have a series of three video clips in which the concept is explained (i) by Dr. Ronald Waterman, one of the founders of Building with Nature; (ii) by Dr. Mark van Koningsveld, a hydraulic engineer, and (iii) by Dr. Bregje van Wesenbeeck, an ecologist.