Johan van Veen

Johan van Veen
Johan van Veen (1953)
Born	(1893-12-21)21 December 1893 Uithuizermeeden, Netherlands
Died	December 9, 1959(1959-12-09) (aged 65–66) The Hague, Netherlands
Cause of death	heart attack during train trip
Nationality	Dutch
Alma mater	Delft University of Technology
Occupation	Civil engineer
Employer	Rijkswaterstaat
Organization	Government
Notable work	Delta Works

Johan van Veen (Uithuizermeeden, 21 December 1893 – The Hague, 9 December 1959) was a Dutch hydraulic engineer and is considered the father of the Delta Works.

Education

Johan van Veen was born as the fifth child in a farmers family of seven children. He was the brother of Marie van Veen, married to the artist Johan Dijkstra. After high school he started his studies in 1913 in Delft at the Technische Hoogeschool van Delft. He studied civil engineering. He graduated in 1919 as "ingenieur" (=M.Sc. in engineering).

Provincial water authority Drenthe

After his graduation he started to work 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 the road structure of the province in order to enlarge the yield of agriculture and to transport the products in a more efficient way to the market (in the western part of the Netherlands). During the first World War it became clear the Netherlands depended too heavy on the import of food products from abroad. Therefore in the years between the World Wards a lot of attention was paid to the agricultural production. In order to have a good basis for plans, the borders of watersheds were charted, discharge measurements were made and levelling of the valleys and the adjacent higher grounds were executed. He did this work in cooperation with the agricultural engineering F.P. Mesu (who graduated in Wageningen).

Surinam

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

Rijkswaterstaat

After his return to the Netherlands in 1929, he got a position at Rijkswaterstaat (the executive agency of the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure). He became head of the newly created research department for the tidal rivers and estuaries. His first assignment was to improve the hydraulic conditions at the 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 for the closure of the Zuiderzee. He wrote a Ph.D. thesis on the sand movement in the Strait of Dover (which was relevant for the Dutch coastal morphology), based on extensive measurements in that area. He produced many (Dutch) reports on the coast, tidal movement, estuaries and salt intrusion. In the years before and during the Second World War Johan van Veen performed many studies on the problem of salt intrusion into the tidal rivers. During the War he prepared a plan called "verlandingenplan" to manipulate the tidal rivers in such a way that quite some natural silting up would take place, and reclaiming this new land would become easy. Just after the war he presented this plan again, but because at that moment focus in the country was not on reclaiming land, but on repairing war damage.

Delta Plan

From 1937 onwards Van Veen warned about the bad condition of the Dutch flood defences. He made clear that a disaster was imminent, but politically there was no support for his warnings. Main reason was that improvement of the dikes would cost a lot of money, which was not available in the Netherlands just after the war (the country depended mainly on money from the Marshall Plan. He had already published a book on the history of Dutch Hydraulic Engineering [Dredge, Drain Reclaim] and in later printings of this book he added a chapter by "Dr. Cassandra" including these warnings. His final warning was a document describing the risks, including a plan to improve the situation by closing some estuaries. This document was dated 31 January 1953. In the next night the Netherlands was struck by the biggest storm surge ever, the North Sea flood of 1953. After the disaster a State Commission was installed (on 18 February 1953), where Johan van Veen was appointed as secretary of the commission. In May 1953 the commission came with the first interim report, recommending closing the Hollandse IJssel with a storm surge barrier Flood barrier immediately, and elaborate the plan of Van Veen to close the estuaries (the Delta Works). Eventually this work was done, the final report of the commission was published in 1960, one year after the death of Johan van Veen. In the Netherlands Johan van Veen is remembered as the "father of the Delta Plan".

Inventions

Johan van Veen made a number of inventions. Notable are the Van Veen Grab Sampler, a device to take (disturbed) bed samples from the seabed (around 1930) . Also he is the inventor of the pneumatic barrier to prevent salt intrusion (around 1940). In 1930 he proved the analogy between electricity and water flow and from this principle he developed an analog computer to calculate tidal flow (electric analogon). It became operational in 1944-1946. Later 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 got the name Deltar.

Private

Van Veen married on May 5th, 1927 during his stay in Surinam with Hendrika (Henny) Aalfs. He had three children. Unfortunately the marriage was not very happy. Although he came from a (non-practising) Dutch Reformed Church-family, he converted to Christian Science, following his sister Anna, who lived in the United States. Van Veen suffered from a number of heart attacks. The first in 1937 and later in 1948 a heavy one after his "four island plan" was rejected. His last, fatal attack was in 1957 in the train when he was travelling to a meeting regarding the planning of a new harbour near Delfzijl, the Eemshaven.

Publications (in English)

• Sand waves in the North Sea Hydrographic review, Vol. XII, No. 1 (May 1935)
• Measurements in the Straits of Dover, and their relation to the Netherlands coasts (1935) PhD thesis Utrecht University
• Water movements in the Straits of Dover J. of Marine Research Vol. 13, no. 1 (1938) ; p. 7-36
• The analogy between tides and electrical currents Rijkswaterstaat BER037,
• Analogy between Tides and A.C. Electricity The Engineer, dec 1947 (pp 498, 520. 544)
• Research of Tidal Rivers in the Netherlands: a successful combination of theory and practice Dock & Harbour Authority, Vol. 27, Nos. 313 and 314, November and December 1946
• Estimates of tidal currents in The Panama Canal Zone (1947, unclear origin)
• The calculation of tides in new channels Transactions American Geophysical Union, 1947, Volume 28, Issue 6
• Dredge, Drain Reclaim (5th edition, 1960) Martinus Nijhof
• Ebb and flood channel systems in the Dutch tidal waters Bilingual version of a paper published in 1950 in the Journal of the Dutch Geographic VII. 67, 1950, 303-325
• Tidal Gullies in youngest peat layer of Groningen Proc. Int. Congress Sedimentology, Netherlands (1951) pp.257-266
• Coasts, estuaries and tidal hydraulics Chapter from the "Civil Engineering Reference Book", edited by E.H. Probst and J. Comrie 1951 (pp1071-1106)
• English and Dutch methods of shore protection (correspondence on a article with R.R. Minikin) The Dock and Harour Authority, May-June 1952
• discussion on: "Application to an hydraulic problem" (by Glover, Herbert & Daum) transactions ASCE,1953 vol 118, pp1010-1028
• Land below sea level : Holland in its age-long fight against the waters 1953 Boucher, The Hague
• Tide-gauges, subsidence-gauges and floodstones in the Netherlands Geologie en Mijnbouw, 1954 (16) pp 214-219 (Symposium quarternary changes in level, especially in the Netherlands)
• Development of marine plains, penetration of sea water in Dutch tidal rivers and inland waters 1957 Pub. 38 IAHR conf Rome (111)
• Necessity of subsidence-gauges Publ. Dutch Geodetic Society for the UGGI congress 1957
• The Rotterdam waterway considered as a rivermouth "De Ingienieur, 1958, nr 28

For a full list of all his publications (mainly in Dutch) is referred to the Tresor of Dutch Hydraulic Engingeering.

References

• Rooijendijk, Cordula (2009). Waterwolven: een geschiedenis van stormvloeden, dijkenbouwers en droogmakers [waterwolves, a history of storm surges, dike builders and reclaimers] (in Dutch). Uitgeverij Atlas. ISBN 9789046703380.
• Van der Ham, Willem (2003). Meester van de zee. Johan van Veen (1893-1959), waterstaatsingenieur [Master of the Sea. Johan van Veen (1893-1959), Engineer at Rijkswaterstaat] (in Dutch). Uitgeverij Balans. ISBN 9050185959.
• Van Veen, Johan (1936). Onderzoekingen in de hoofden [Research in the Strait of Dover] (Thesis) (in Dutch). Utrecht University.
• Van Veen, Johan (7 May 1937). "Getijstroomberekeningen met behulp van wetten analoog aan die van Ohm en Kirchhoff" [Calculation of tidal current using laws analog to those of Ohm and Kirchhoff]. De Ingenieur (in Dutch). 52 (19): B73–B81.
• Van Veen, Johan (7 March 1941). "Twee middelen om het zoutbezwaar bij zeesluizen op te heffen" [Two methods to solve the salt-intrusion problems at navigation locks]. De Ingenieur (in Dutch). 56 (10): B33–B34.