From Polders to Palafitos: A Buoyancy-Engineering and Social-Acceptance Framework for Transferring Dutch Amphibious Housing to Peru's Flood-Prone Settlements

Background: Riverine and coastal flooding is intensifying across both high-income deltaic nations and developing tropical countries, though the two contexts are rarely studied together. The Netherlands has institutionalised amphibious construction as a flood-adaptation strategy, while Peru's Amazonian and northern coastal settlements rely on centuries-old stilt (palafito) and floating-house traditions that remain informal and technically unsupported. Objective: To characterise the engineering, market and institutional basis of Dutch amphibious housing and to assess, through a structured qualitative comparison, which elements of this experience can realistically be transferred to Peruvian riverine and coastal contexts. Methods: A qualitative, comparative case-study design was used. Purposively selected peer-reviewed and institutional sources on the Maasbommel amphibious development were contrasted with recent peer-reviewed studies on Peru's 2017 Coastal El Niño and on the Bajo/Nuevo Belén riverine settlements of Iquitos. A comparison matrix and a set of standard buoyancy-engineering design relations were used to structure the analysis. Results: The Dutch model's technical success rests on buoyant concrete/timber hulls guided by fixed posts, engineered to accommodate documented water-level fluctuations of up to 5.5 m, embedded within an explicit flood-management programme (“Room for the River”) and, initially, an ambiguous regulatory framework. In Peru, an estimated 76,140 people live in the Belén area of Iquitos alone, already practising informal amphibious adaptation, while the 2017 Coastal El Niño affected approximately 1.9 million people and damaged over 300,000 homes on the northern coast. Peru possesses relevant cultural precedent and acute need but lacks engineered buoyant foundations, formal land tenure and dedicated financing. Conclusions: The Dutch model is transferable in principle but not directly replicable. A hybrid, incremental approach — engineered buoyant retrofits of existing palafito structures using locally available materials, integrated into Peru's national building code and accompanied by community-based design and phased public financing — offers the most defensible pathway. Further site-specific hydrological and structural studies are required before implementation.