Johan van Veen


Johan van Veen was a Dutch hydraulic engineer and is considered the father of the Delta Works.

Education

Johan van Veen was born as the fifth child of seven in a farming family. He was the brother of Marie van Veen, married to the artist Johan Dijkstra. In 1913 after high school graduation, he started his studies in Delft at the Technische Hoogeschool van Delft. He studied civil engineering. In 1919 he graduated as "ingenieur".

Provincial Water Authority Drenthe

He started to work as an engineer for the Drainage Department of the Provincial Water Authority of the Province of Drenthe. The task of this department was to develop plans to improve the drainage and road structure of the province in order to enlarge the agricultural yield and to transport the products in a more efficient way to the markets. During the Great War it had become evident that The Netherlands depended too strongly on food products from abroad. The years between the World Wars were focused on agriculture. In order to have solid grounds for such plans, the borders of watersheds were charted, discharge measurements were made and levelling out valleys and the adjacent higher grounds works were executed. Van Veen carried out these studies in cooperation with agricultural engineer F.P. Mesu.

Surinam

In 1926 Van Veen left the Provincial Water Authority. From August 1926 to October 1928 he had worked in Surinam at the Surinaamse Bauxiet Maatschappij, a subsidiary of the later US company Alcoa in Moengo, Suriname.

Rijkswaterstaat

In 1929, after his return to the Netherlands, he held a position at Rijkswaterstaat. He became Head of the newly created Research Department for Tidal Rivers and Estuaries. His first assignment was to improve the hydraulic conditions at Hellegat, a complicated bifurcation of estuary branches.
He also developed a new method to calculate tides, an improvement of the formulas developed by Hendrik Lorentz on the closure of the Zuiderzee.
He published his Ph.D. thesis on sand movement in the Strait of Dover, based on extensive measurements in that area. He wrote many reports on the coasts, tidal movements, estuaries and salt intrusion.
In the years before and during the Second World War, Johan van Veen executed many studies on the problem of salt intrusion into tidal rivers. During the War he had prepared a plan called "Verlandingsplan" to manipulate tidal rivers in such a way that quite some natural silting-up would take place, and that to reclaim this new land would be easy. Just after the war, he presented this plan again, but mainly because at that time the country focused rather not on reclaiming land, but on repairing war damage.

Delta Plan

From 1937 onwards Van Veen warned about the deplorable condition of the Dutch flood defences. He stipulated that a disaster was imminent, but politically he found no support for his warnings, the main reason being that improvement of dikes would cost a lot of money, which was not available in The Netherlands just after the war. He had already published a book in English on the history of Dutch Hydraulic Engineering. In later reprints of this book he added a chapter by "Dr. Cassandra" as he used this pseudonym, including these warnings. His final warning report was a study describing the risks, including a plan to improve the situation by closing some estuaries. This document was dated January 29, 1953.
During the following night The Netherlands were struck by the biggest storm surge ever, the North Sea flood of February 1st, 1953. After the disaster a State Commission was installed, and Johan van Veen was appointed Secretary of the State Commission. In May 1953 the commission offered its first interim report, recommending immediate closure of the Hollandse IJssel with a storm surge barrier Flood barrier, and to implement Van Veen's plan to close the estuaries. Eventually this work had been carried out; the final report of the commission was published in 1960, one year after Johan van Veen died. In The Netherlands Johan van Veen is remembered as the "father of the Delta Plan" and in England as "Master of the Floods".

Inventions

Johan van Veen has a number of inventions to his name. Notable is the Van Veen Grab Sampler, a device to take bed samples from the seabed. He is also the inventor of the pneumatic barrier to prevent salt intrusion. In 1930 he proved the analogy between electricity and water flow. From this principle he developed an analog computer to calculate tidal flow. In the period 1944-1956 it had become operational. Later on this machine was updated and became the practical computer to calculate tidal flow and water levels in the Dutch Delta (to predict the effect of closure works, the Delta Works. This analog computer now bears the name Deltar.

Private

On May 5, 1927, Van Veen married Hendrika Aalfs during his stay in Suriname. He had three children. Unfortunately their marriage was not very happy.
Although he came from a Dutch Reformed Church family, he converted to Christian Science until 1937, following his sister Anna, who lived in the United States. Van Veen suffered from a number of heart attacks, the first one in 1937 and later in 1948 a heavy one after his "four-island-plan" was rejected. In 1959 he had his last, fatal attack in the train when on his way to a meeting regarding his plan of a new harbour near Delfzijl, the Eemshaven.

Publications (in English)

For a full list of all his publications is referred to the Tresor of .