For nearly 90 years, a 32-km dike on the Dutch coast has kept the North Sea from inundating a huge area of the Netherlands, around Amsterdam. Now, to counter the ravages of time and rising sea levels, work to upgrade the Afsluitdijk to handle a 10,000 year flood is well under way, although much delayed by erroneous design data.
The government project is raising the level of the old Crane barge Titaan placing XblocPlus armor (closing dike) by about 2 m while reinforcing the sea-facing side with a layer of newly developed concrete armor blocks.