Environmental cooperation with the United States
The U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Administration and Rijkswaterstaat work together on a number of issues through the Memorandum of Cooperation.
Sharing knowledge
The resilience and adaptation of transport infrastructure has been a cooperation topic since October 2013. This has resulted in an exchange of knowledge, approaches, frameworks, reports and other relevant information.
Resilience and adaptation of transport infrastructure
The exchange on resilience has resulted in mutual sharing of knowledge, experience and information in this area of work, such as vulnerability and risk assessment and adaptation measures. This has resulted in a more complete set of knowledge, to the point where we are ready on both sides of the ocean to implement this expertise in projects and integrate it into working practices.
This has already been demonstrated in projects on both sides.
Experience and learning
This experience has been used to improve the quality of projects and to increase the learning effect. For example, information has been exchanged on the Dutch stress test of the national road network.
The actual cooperation in projects in the United States has been achieved by involving road authorities and knowledge centres in Washington State and North Carolina.
The focus is on adapting roads to climate change, with sub-themes such as asset management, sustainability and nature-based solutions.
Comparing methods
As part of this collaboration, the European ROADAPT methodology and the US methodology FHWA Climate Adaptation Framework have been compared in a Rijkswaterstaat project and in a Washington State Department of Transportation project. The result is that both sets of tools have a similar approach and generally produce comparable results.
However, each tool has its own specific qualities and applicability. The ideal tool is different for each situation and requires expert knowledge to implement and interpret the results. This will help future users to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the tools.