Winning Ideas for Adapting Urban Deltas

Competition organizers asked for original, practical, and scientifically-supported ideas for responding to increasing threats facing delta cities and their inhabitants. Entries came from across a number of disciplines, including spatial planning, infrastructure and buildings, governance, economics, hydraulics and water management.

The winning students and the titles of their submissions are:
• David Wooden from Virginia University USA, Landscape Architecture - The Big Leak: Adaptive responses to New Orleans' land subsidence crisis
• Novi Rahmawati from Gadjah Mada University Indonesia, Water Resource Management - Groundwater zoning as spatial planning in Semarang
• Haein Lee, Gyoung Tak Park, and Soomin Shin from Harvard University USA, Landscape Architecture - Ecology as Industry

The Panel of Judges deliberated over submissions from five continents and appraised the entries with particular attention to: relevance to a problem that delta cities face with climate change; scientific fact andreasoning; innovative elements and ideas; and presentation of concepts and ideas.

The Panel of Judges consisted of: Prof. Sybe Schaap, chairman of the Union of Water Boards in the Netherlands and professor at the VU University Amsterdam; Prof. Pier Vellinga, professor at Wageningen University and Director of the Knowledge for Climate Programme in the Netherlands; Prof. Hans Opschoor, Professor of Sustainable Development Economics at the Institute of Social Studies and Professor in Environmental Economics at the VU University Amsterdam and Mr. Tom Smit, Director of Royal Haskoning's Spatial Development Division.

In general, the judges were impressed with the range of subjects and the innovativeness of the papers. The high quality of submissions made the selection of winning papers a difficult task, but the judges finally reached a verdict with three winning papers and seven runners-up, which were all published in a book and displayed on posters at the conference.