In the first week of November, 4 young hydrologists from the Blue Deal partnership in Argentina paid a work visit to the Dutch water authority Brabantse Delta. They came to work with Dutch hydrologists on a hydrological (surface water) model for the basin of the Blue Deal partnership in Argentina: the TandÃl-General Lavalle basin in the south of Buenos Aires.
The hydrologists work at ADA (Autoridad de Agua of the province of Buenos Aires). They had already done a lot of preliminary work in Argentina in the past couple of months and came here to work this out with the Dutch team mebers and also to learn how the water authorities in the Netherlands work.
Hydrological model
The aim of the Blue Deal collaboration with the province of Buenos Aires is to have water management partly carried out by the residents themselves. Organizational formation is necessary for this and that is the core of the project. A hydrological model is a very useful tool for this, because this provides insight into the functioning of the water system. This helps the different types of users and different areas to work better together. You can use a model to provide residents/users with insight into the influence of upstream measures on the downstream part, and vice versa.
The 4 hydrologists worked very hard on their model together with the Dutch hydrologists this week. Of course they also learned more about how the Dutch water authorities function and the Dutch team showed them many examples of Dutch water management. For example to Deltares, Kinderdijk and the Delta Works (Deltawerken). The team also took them to projects that members of the team had worked on themselves.
Lessons learned
What did the hydrologists learn from their visit? What they remember most is that the Dutch work together with so many other parties, such as municipalities, provinces, nature managers, Rijkswaterstaat and the residents in the area. And that the Dutch water authorities can work on their projects with continuity, so that they can also complete them within the foreseeable future. The 4 hydrologists will now disseminate the knowledge they have learned within their own organization.