Multidisciplinary education with research and practice platform
The Delta Futures Lab is a multidisciplinary interfaculty platform for MSc-students and staff that fosters a close relation to the delta community in practice with the ambition to educate interdisciplinary leaders in spatial design, engineering and governance of deltas. The Lab unites master students, researchers and professionals in multidisciplinary MSc 3 and graduation projects. It enriches and supports master students in becoming the mission-oriented engineers that future delta societies need.
With the Delta Futures lab, TU Delft presents itself as interdisciplinary leader in spatial design, engineering and governance of deltas. Deltas worldwide are under accelerating pressure of climate-induced sea-level rise and hydrological extremes and unprecedented economic growth and urbanization. Former high-end scenarios rapidly become thinkable futures that push delta interventions outside state-off-art delta management practice. The Delta Futures lab joins scientific, public and private forces in its mission to maintain urbanizing deltas as sources of economic, social and ecological prosperity. It aims to deliver the next level of delta management technology, spatial designs, institutional arrangements, and management concepts and implement them with our public and private partners in the global delta community.
The goal of Delta Futures Lab is to enhance skills and competences in integrated spatial and engineering design, governance and management of urbanizing deltas. University staff will use the lab to further develop methods in interdisciplinary design and research-by-design.
The resources for the Delta Futures Lab come from the pooled in-kind education and research resources of the faculties of CEG, A+BE, ID and TPM of TU Delft and is powered by the Delta Infrastructures and Mobility Initiative (DIMI). Societal partners contribute lectures, internships, projects and supervision of interdisciplinary teams in master thesis projects. In return, they receive access to state-of-art knowledge, innovations and promising, well trained and responsible professionals. The unique strength of the program is its combination of world-leading research groups in hydraulic engineering, infrastructure design, urban planning, climate adaptation, governance, and resilience engineering.
Governance
The DFL is coordinated by a board of members of the three main participating faculties, TPM Ellen Minkman, A+BE Fransje Hooimeijer, CEG Sierd de Vries (HE) Anne de Baar (WM) Stephan Toby/Joep Storms (Geo) and a secretary/liaison officer (role is vacant) who can also nurture external contacts, this board is supported by a student assistant Frédérique van Tilborg (Bsc architecture student).