Samenvatting

From the very beginnings of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, water management has been a topic of prime importance. This subject has taken even greater priority in recent times due to climate change and the consequent erratic weather and sea-level rise. The measures taken to ensure water safety have been allocated ever-greater budgets to handle the diverse issues.

One of these emerging issues is the rise in Eurasian beaver (Castor fiber) populations in the Netherlands. They are an indigenous species that faced a local extinction two hundred years ago but who have since been reintroduced and have re-established themselves across their former range.

The conflict arises whereby their habitat and living requirements clash with our (human) water management principles. This takes the form of burrowing in dykes, which greatly weakens the integrity of the structures and increases the risk of failure, the result of which could lead to massive losses in terms of life as well as property.

This research paper intends to guide the reader through an exploration of the development of floating high-water refuges, which seek to be a compromise between the beaver’s need for shelter during flooded periods and human society’s need for increased water safety in the years to come.

The methods used to collect data are primarily literature reviews, meetings and interviews with involved professionals and map analyses. Provided this data, technical and functional requirements for the structures were proposed, from which preliminary design concepts were made. These were then subjected to iterative hand and software calculations to determine the static stability of the structures during extreme river discharges.

The result of this was that the final structure met the technical and functional requirements. The cavecat on predicted success is the limited information available on the use of such structures by wildlife. Hence, real-world tests are required to conclusively determine their adoption.