October 1st is the official start of ‘storm season.’ About 50,000 Rotterdammers live outside the dykes. But ‘beyond the dyk-ers’ are an incredibly diverse group people, neighbourhoods and locations. What does ‘getting your feet wet?’ really mean in one location?
On September 15th, 2026, Ms Ellen van Bodegom, from Iedereen aan Boord and Dr. Siobhán Airey, from Erasmus School of Law, walked specific locations on Noordereiland with neighbours and visitors, to explore how different people experience the risk and reality of flooding. How well do standard webpage public notices reach people where Dutch is not their first language? Do people with mobility challenges use publicly-provided sandbags? How can public bodies partner effectively with community-led responsive initiatives? Where does public responsibility and private responsibility meet? What does ‘fairness’ mean, when a single flooding event in one location can have such different negative impacts on people.
The Walk provided a valuable opportunity to examine a hidden dimension to the Netherlands’ approach to flood risk management. Unlike for areas protected by dykes, , flooding is high probability and high impact for Noordereilanders. Though civilian preparedness for floods is already hampered by a lack of shared knowledge on responsibilities, responses and options for recovery, building meaningful ‘resilience’ requires making ‘fairness’ a core principle of any response.
The Walk is part of an engaged research project led by Dr. Airey that includes non-traditional legal research methods, including knowledge co-creation practices, to examine the law and governance of Just Transition. The project is funded by a Convergence Kick Starter project (2026).
