Strategic Plan Room for Water Dender Valley

The project's mission is to reduce the risk of flooding, whereby not only the risk is considered, but also the spatial and social added values for the area. IMDC and partners are looking for solutions for the flooding problem and for the valley itself. Think of possibilities in the field of housing, economy, agriculture, nature and so on. The Strategic Plan plans measures and actions that put this integrated development vision into practice.

The process approach for drawing up the Strategic Plan is a method based on research by design, co-creation, openness and consultation. This approach is aimed at an efficient and high-quality process to reduce the flood risk in the Dender Valley with maximum stakeholder’s support and maximum added social and spatial value. 

1. After ending the exploratory phase (2017-2018), the partners started in 2019 with the preparation of the research phase. As a first step, the mission and the goals of the strategic plan are elaborated in several (measurable) objectives, also called ambitions. This resulted in June 2020 in a memorandum of goals and ambitions: a compass towards a strategic plan for the Dender Valley. 
2. To realize these ambitions, several building blocks (concepts of possible measures) were elaborated during fall 2020, based on the inventory during the earlier exploratory phase, work sessions and debate with the stakeholders, design research and surface water modelling. In total, eight building blocks are included and described in the building blocks note. 
3. With these building blocks various alternatives will be put together to obtain the goals of the strategic plan (2021). In the next step – from 2022 on – these alternatives will be examined through integrated research to evaluate in which extend these alternatives contribute to the mission and the goals of the strategic plan: to reduce the flood risk and to realize spatial and social added values. 
4. This will lead in 2022 to a proposal for a preferred alternative that will be submitted to the Flemish government for approval. After this formal approval, the different partners and stakeholders can start with the preparation and realization of the different measures.

IMDC was responsible for the general project management. This project management involved the organisation and follow up of both internal and external processes and communication with the client and the stakeholders.