Responding to the 1953 flood, the Delta Act of 1958 authorised a vast programme to shorten and strengthen the coastline by damming the delta's tidal inlets. The resulting Delta Works comprised dams, sluices and the movable Oosterschelde storm-surge barrier completed in 1986, with the Maeslantkering protecting Rotterdam finished in 1997. The act also codified statutory safety standards expressed as acceptable flood probabilities. It reorganised water management around quantified risk.
The Delta Works are one of the largest flood-defence systems ever built and established probabilistic safety as the basis of Dutch water policy.
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