Piet Dircke is standing on the sidewalk at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport pointing up to the building’s second floor. Or, as he puts it, sea level. The tarmac, where planes taxi nearby, should be about four meters under water, he explains. It isn’t submerged because of more than a century of work by Dutch engineers, like Dircke, on a complex network of dikes, sea barriers, and pumping stations.
Image: Piet Dircke (left) looks across the Nieuwe Waterweg from beneath one of the giant arms of the Maeslantkering storm surge barrier. - https://www.technologyreview.com
