7 minute read
Foreword
Creating Value by Engineering With Nature
We rely on natural processes and landscapes to sustain human life and well-being. Our energy, water, infrastructure, and agricultural systems use these processes and landscapes to satisfy our most basic human needs. One motivation, therefore, for protecting the environment is to sustain the ecosystem goods and services upon which we depend. As we emerge from the sixth decade of modern environmentalism, there is a growing international awareness of opportunities to efficiently and effectively integrate natural and engineered systems to create even more value.
These opportunities are being realized through innovative
application of scientific and engineering principles to design, construct, and implement efficient systems;
use of natural processes and systems to maximize benefit;
development of integrated systems to produce a more diverse array of economic, environmental, and social benefits; and
collaborations and partnerships across perspectives, disciplines, and organizations to deliver better outcomes.
A large and growing community of interests and organizations around the world are contributing to these advancements in practice. The Engineering With Nature® (EWN®) initiative in the United States—led by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), along with its partners and collaborators—is pursuing a vision for water infrastructure based on the intentional alignment of natural and engineering processes to efficiently and sustainably deliver economic, environmental, and social benefits through collaboration. The EWN Strategic Plan 2018-2023 is guiding actions to broaden and deepen partnerships, expand capabilities, and increase application and communication in order to deliver, demonstrate, and document the approach’s benefits.
Sharing practices and progress across the international community is essential for building momentum for future integration of natural and human systems. This book was developed to communicate the diversity of projects, contexts, and organizations
that are advancing worldwide progress in this field. Because “seeing is believing,” we’ve emphasized visual depictions of projects (with brief narrative descriptions) to give interested readers and practitioners alike a tangible sense of the potential to engineer with nature. This representative collection of projects was assembled from contributions made by many different organizations and countries to illustrate the broad range of motivations and outcomes that can be served. Many more projects could have been included, and we’re planning future volumes of the EWN Atlas to present new collections of projects that capture even more opportunity and potential.
People and communities around the world are looking for improved integration across interests, further practical innovation, and added value from public and private investments in engineered and natural infrastructure. With respect to these goals, I hope you are inspired by the beautiful projects in this atlas and the many benefits that can be achieved by Engineering With Nature.
Innovating New Aproaches as a Global Community of Practitioners
Engineering With Nature is an important initiative for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
When we leverage natural systems and processes through integrated water resources management, we can develop more sustainable solutions and systems. By broadening our view of potential outcomes, we can find ways to deliver a broader array of services, benefits, and value from investments made in infrastructure systems.
Innovation and adaptive management are key elements to advancing our engineering practice and Engineering With Nature. Trying something new—developing and implementing new approaches, methods, and practices—involves taking risks. We use risk-informed decision making to guide our application of new approaches. We adaptively manage those risks as we learn and adjust our approach.
The project examples highlighted in this book illustrate the diverse opportunities and growing community of organizations and practitioners that are contributing to Engineering With Nature. A global community of practitioners provides a means for learning from others and capitalizing on the insights gained to develop better projects in the future. Strong partnerships provide a foundation for successful projects.
I hope you enjoy learning from the projects in this book while considering future ways that you can contribute to Engineering With Nature.
Developing Integrated Natural Flood Risk Solutions
Working with natural processes to manage flood and coastal erosion risks is an important theme in the UK Government’s new national 25-year plan for the environment. Engineering With Nature, or “Natural Flood Management” as we often refer to it, is an important tool in flood risk toolbox and can bring fabulous environmental benefits too.
Approaching flood risk with softer engineered solutions is not new to our engineers. For years, many of our beaches have been managed to take the energy out of stormy seas to protect our coasts, and in the northeast of England, flood water has been stored in catchments on the “Ings”—and old Norse word for flood meadows—for generations.
What is new is a better understanding of how we can work collaboratively to provide the most effective blend of solutions. Too often, the conversation has been about a false choice between hard or soft engineering—as if there were conflict or competition between them.
We’re proud to have been able to contribute nine case studies to the Engineering With Nature Atlas. I hope you’ll be inspired by the projects in the Atlas from across the world and use it to continue to build our capacity to collaborate with each other and with nature to protect people from environmental hazards and to enhance the environment for wildlife.
Utilizing EWN Solutions Adaptively
For the Netherlands, a country which is below sea level for about 30% and flood-prone for about 60% of its surface, Engineering With Nature approaches are essential to improve our flood safety in an adaptive manner, while also achieving other societal goals such of ecosystem services, navigation, or recreation.
As such, it influences not only the safety but also the quality of life for many millions of people living in those areas. The Dutch Delta Program stipulates the Dutch national policy and associated programs, backed up by a Delta Law and a Delta Fund. It firmly connects our adaptive flood safety approach with spatial quality ambitions, increasing our nations resiliency to sea level rise and potentially more extreme weather due to climate change. Engineering With Nature is one of the innovative approaches and has actually become the preferred option in many Dutch cases. However, it also involves a different approach as we are working in and with dynamic systems. Upfront modelling, full scale testing, intensive stakeholder consultations, and a careful project management and monitoring of its effects all become essential disciplines for a successful project. Our adaptive approach may also result in minor or major maintenance, contrary to conventional “hard engineering,” requiring appropriate long-term financial provisions.
Rijkswaterstaat and the Dutch Regional Water Authorities are proud that several Dutch case studies have been included in this atlas. With the Atlas we intend to inspire other Nations and its authorities to keep an “open eye” and increasing our scientific understanding to the immense challenge lying ahead to keep our world safer for future flooding and making it a “better place to live” at the same time.
