What North Carolina Can Learn From the Dutch

From the  June 30. 2014 issue of the New York Times, Awakening the "Dutch Gene" of Water Survival by Christopher Schuetze regarding a sand castle building competition in the Netherlands:

"Theirs was no ordinary day at the beach, but a newly minted state-sanctioned competition for schoolchildren to raise awareness of the dangers of rising sea levels in a country of precarious geography that was provided lessons for the world about water management, but that fears that its next generation will grow complacent.

Before the competition, the children, ages 6 to 11, were coached by experts in dike building and water management.  Volunteers stood by, many of them freshly graduated civil engineers, giving last-minute advice on how best to battle the rising water.

The event, sponsored by two regional water authorities, also featured sophisticated Dutch technology, including an airborne drone that monitors hard-to-reach water management infrastructure, and a jeep-mounted infrared camera used to detect weaknesses in dikes, which showed thermal images of the most promising sand castles resisting the seas."