Levees, probability, computers and more: reflections on a 7 year "trip" to the Netherlands

Abstract In this presentation the speaker will share a few technical topics and reflect on his experience working in the Netherlands after finishing graduate school at Berkeley. The Dutch approach to flood protection will be introduced and examined from an insiders view, and a few innovative analytic approaches using probability will be introduced. The speakers experience in designing and teaching a large MS course that bridges data science and civil engineering with open source software and computation will be used to share thoughts about the future of these topics in engineering practice and curricula. Useful Resources For technical background on the Risk Curve and a history explained by Greg Baecher in a video, see this page my online textbook Risk and Reliability for Engineers. A simple introduction to Dutch flood protection can be found in "Fundamentals of Flood Protection, downloadable as an English PDF (the Dutch version is Grondslagen voor hoogwaterbescherming, both published by ENW). Advanced probabilistic methods are introduced in the online lecture notes for the TU Delft course MORE. Many MUDE resources are available online at the website mude.citg.tudelft.nl. Make sure to check out the 2025 version of the online textbook, which was just finished. The video demonstration of the interactive features in the slides does not work in the PDF, but can be watched on YouTube here. Bio Robert is a San Francisco Bay Area native and UC Berkeley graduate (GeoSystems). He worked for a few years as a consultant in the Bay Area before returning to graduate school at Berkeley, where he eventually earned a PhD using probabilistic methods to evaluate the influence of large woody vegetation on levees in the Central Valley. However, along the way he discovered a passion for teaching and seized an opportunity to become a lecturer at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, where he spent the last seven years. During that time he learned a lot about the Dutch approach to flood protection, as well as a variety of risk and reliability approaches, data science and open source software. Robert moved back to the Bay Area in 2025 and is currently working at GEI Consultants in Oakland. References Many slides on levees are from lecture materials from CIE5314-19 Flood Defences at TU Delft (B. Jonkman, M. Tonneijck, J. Weijers, R. Jorissen, C. Van, R. Lanzafame). Advanced probability slides are modified from ESREL 2021 presentation materials: Lanzafame, R., Timmermans, M., Orlin, F., Valls, S., & Morales, O. (2021). Probabilistic design for civil engineering infrastructure using vine-copulas. Paper presented at the 31st European Safety and Reliability Conference, Angers, France. Maps of Netherlands surficial geology are from: Vos, P., M. van der Meulen, H. Weerts and J. Bazelmans 2020: Atlas of the Holocene Netherlands, landscape and habitation since the last ice age, Amsterdam (Amsterdam University Press). Available for download here. Images and photos are generally referenced, available online on creative commons or public domain sites, and in some cases the sources are not known; please contact the speaker with any concerns.