In recent years extensive flooding around the world has increased causing catastrophic damage in many countries. Excessive pumping of groundwater the building dams the added weight of huge buildings all contribute to the looming disaster as sea levels rise a number of coastal cities sink becoming more vulnerable to flooding. More than a third of the big urban centers located by the sea are endangered threatening the Living Conditions of millions of people. Measuring the stakes in economic and human terms scientists agree that action must be taken quickly but what should be done in a huge city and its inhabitants be protected from flooding. Walls enough or should we reinvent the city for the twenty First Century and beyond this is an urgent question for engineers architects and urban planners or laboring to come up with solutions to reconcile man with nature. In thailand bangkok is a striking example of an urban center regularly subjected to floods which imposed terrible consequences on its population and disrupts the entire countrys economy. Yanyuwa ma. Soon brings rains which sustain its agriculture the timing of the season has become unpredictable in an era of Global Warming because much uses networks of dams to regulate the flow of water retaining its when there is rain releasing it during droughts. In two thousand and eleven the system is completely overwhelmed by that years weather patterns. In two thousand and eleven there are so many monsoon come to the country and especially to the north and part of thailand and there are too much water above the dam we have eight or nine dams in the middle of the country. The dam operator which is beloved to the electrical generating corporate of thailand not whether it will be drought or not so they kept the water for so long in to about sixty seventy eighty percent capacity of the dam to make sure that they have water for the every case should. But somehow there is too much water so they have to leave needs the water and in order to listen about their daily needs it so fast at some short time so thats why we have the situation in two thousand and eleven that here water fall into the city of bangkok where there is no way to coordinate between them beforehand. As a result huge quantities of water were released into the rivers and before reaching the sea the waters poured into bangkok. Built in the one nine hundred eighty s. The kings time one hundred seventy kilometers long is normally able to protect the center of town from floodwaters in two thousand and. Eleven but damn itself was submerged. The government then decided to raise the height of the dam by two meters. Than six hundred thousand sandbags were deployed to save the city center. Given. What. Was. On the other side of the dike thousands of people were left to cope with the consequences of the flight. For three months inhabitants lived in dyess sanitary conditions the floodwaters were contaminated by sewage and dead animals. But the people behind the a sandbag suffer. Their one pool pick this back at least a watering hole the so there was some fighting between the two sides of the people. Who have fallen who have look at those filthy water how can people live like this theyre protected downtown bangkok are not the suburbs they only protected many body in the city of bangkok memory not go up. Or not the army intervene to protect the dying from the anger of the population. The human toll was enormous the floods also impacted the nations economy. Thailand at the time the leading export of rice in the world lost a quarter of that is production. You may already know that. This area we have the right production at this is a rice bowl of the country and we need a lot of water to make sure that in the dry season during the flood. The production of the rice has been damaged. In bangkok floods have many repercussions first and most heavily on the lines of inhabitants but also in the Financial Stability of the countries affected in washington d. C. Experts from the world bank calculate the social and Economic Costs of such disasters. The problem with the link between floods and poverty is that the poor are more vulnerable and proportionately lose more than the rich its a machine to increase inequality so if youre a little poorer than the others you live in an area which is more at risk and youll have more chance of losing what you have during the floods so trying to improve your economic status will become even more difficult but. You feel. Even with only twenty centimeters of Sea Level Rise if you take into account the subsidence mechanism you will see that the costs of flooding in these large coastal cities increases from sixty seven billion dollars today to amounts to become absolutely gigantic. So in the scenario we were looking at where nothing is done at all we arrive at costs that amount to a trillion dollars this shows that the scenario where we do nothing is not realistic and i were just. When bangkok was facing that severe flood we realized that the city is not just a thai city it is a world city there was a total Economic Cost of almost forty five billion dollars the. Most of the floods in late two thousand and eleven but perhaps even more striking was that is that the effect was felt all over the world the price of hard drives for computers went up by a hundred percent because fifty percent of hard drives in the world were being produced in and around bangkok at that point in time the supply chains were disrupted but six thousand rules were affected one of the major airports was shut down this is one of the challenges of globalization its a very integrated world and bangkok is very much part of that Global Supply chain and we felt that not just sitting here in bangkok but all over the world. A combination of factors rising sea levels ground subsidence and lack of protection has made bangkok extremely vulnerable. The thais have no better option than to reimagine the city. Their solution of moving is not possible we cannot move you know. Temple. In the palace they can palace is not possible to move ok so what we have to do is we need to protect it. Before but on the other side of course yes we cant wait for disaster to strike before acting we have to do exactly the opposite it is we have to act before the disaster hits. The problem when you look at how things go politically in countries usually the major changes in regulations are the Big Investments for protection i place after a disaster. No next year nonaction is not an option we have to invest in coastal differences in these large cities to protect the population and to protect the economy because we see that in many countries these coastal cities are central to economic activity. But actually they could make. As populations grow big urban centers develop accordingly. But what effective means of protection do they have. When we think about sort of responding to flood hazards theres really three things we can do in the general sense we can retreat so we can not live there in the first place so we we just theres nothing to be damaged. We can actually. Use accommodate or flood proof you can make sure the buildings are flooded theres no damage will make you can elevate building so theyre above the flood waters or you can protect which is maybe what most people would think of whereby you would build barriers dikes or big sand giunta whatever things that keep the sea out of the city. Building walls for protection is an ancient tradition in china. Chinese engineers took inspiration from the great wall when constructing coastal towns which is evident in the case of shanghai. Happened especially in a. High tide and. Upstream come together. Happened some time in the sea level that quickly. Five meter and this is a. Good if such a stream situation happened this is a dangerous challenge for. Kilometer. Its a protective shell in china on the coast that britain sells and. Bike and then the future. Probably is now want to build a mall. Only want kind of coming up at us like a bike nobody can know what. Kind of on the other hand this is also pay such an important a low to protect people from the sea but the doubt cos theyre not a problem is. That a lot of you know what happened the last. Twenty lines on natural gas as they have the capacity to retain water and to levy an intensity of fonts that preservation is essential. But that we are a lot of discussion well should the protective when its all right in line which the fact that. You know what dan tastes a lot only protect shanghai but also provide the habitat to for a lot of. The fish so shanghai common didnt pay a lot a lot of attention to to conservation up to the to nature reserve you know you asked for. Food and if you see all this we have to consider both the cheapest options and thats why theres a lot of work on the preservation of natural areas and wetlands to help cushion the impact of storm center much less expensive than our differences and also because we always need our defenses in dikes and strong protections particularly for the most densely Populated Areas think of Funding Resources so cities going to face them. Is a major mega city maybe the largest mega city i dont know tokyo yokohama maybe thirty five mm. People a lot of people and when you get a lot of people youre going to get substance they have great engineers and they started to understand the connection between human decisions and this rate of sinking and theyve largely changed their behavior as a country as a city and the rater substances basically stopped so theres a great feedback with them between human Decision Making human action and whats happening on the landscape. To minimize flood risks three hundred years ago the japanese diverted the turn a river to make it flow into the Pacific Ocean instead of the bay of tokyo. The huge canal dargon the Twentieth Century also helps to drain excess water. Thanks. To complete the preventative measures engineers also created a vast underground drainage network. In. This complex is to handle water mainly flood water by retaining it so that there is less water in the soil when the flood happens. But. Its been used ninety one times over the past twelve years thats on average about seven times a year since the opening of the facility. To cope without quakes the underground network has many backup systems. And when a bigger the way our large flooding happens we have a backup plan a backup power system so this complex will still be operating normally. So there is no problem at the. Base huge network is geared to deal with the types of extreme events tokyo experienced in the past. Last. Ten p. M. Sport area is particularly vulnerable to flooding. Here another system protects the inhabitants from high coastal waters. For the case of storms our shorts and i mean the. Water comes from the bay and going into this tunnel and finally goes to. This small riba through the this leave our mouths and the water go into the small river im going downtown tokyo and in downtown there will be the frat. From place to place so soon this smooth tunnel slowly about that tokyo is not that well protected they want to come into that into they made it into tokyo downtown area. So that we constructed dikes and he has holes and also. To protect this area. So we are now passing. On each side of the. Height of the moon was almost one point five meters but after we saw out from the profit that the wind was on eight the height of the flow that i was three point five meet us higher than a site so there are more than twenty thousand vote on the world against the for the fish in this area. All of these flood gates are remotely controlled. By whom. We control turn water gates from the center and if a typhoon is approaching talk. The Meteorological Center will issue an alert for heavy rain and flooding and then well set ourselves in motion. We give the alert that the sea level is rising and check the gates. Attention citizens the flood gate is closing. It is also reinforced by sliding barriers within the streets of the city itself. So here is a sliding door. And this door. In case of stones and coming down here is a lot. Closed because on the other hand the other side and they come and. Go and. So after the way the closed this side is unsafe area so the people should leave their car outside and then. It is possible for us to cut if you wait how much we lost for the case of pratt to stop such and this amount is far much greater than the cost for countermeasure us so we commend that to stop this huge loss of fortune with a case of such a threat it is necessary to thanks present storm size media and those heighten the total height of force and this is really much cheaper than the possible loss of fortune. Japan system of defense against funding is predicated on the previous. Behavior of typhoons. In todays world Global Warming has altered the projections of the engineers for the case of the storm such. Global warming is paying a very important no. Increase of surface temperature or ocean. Intensity increases in this century we find out that the tendency or behave be are coming to japanese iran changed previously time home or storm came to japanese and hunt so then they speed up and run away from the island but listen to the. Long are in the iron. So this is what we are afraid that. Comes to the japanese side and to talk of. In the wake of increased intensity of natural disasters and the accident at fukushima the japanese are realistic sometimes projections even the most sophisticated cannot guarantee the safety of the population. Plant gates evacuation systems and Risk Awareness japan has developed an arsenal of defenses to cope with floods and minimize their impact. Elsewhere in the world many cities and even some highly developed have not sufficiently anticipated these risks consider the case of new york city in two thousand and twelve Hurrican Sandy revealed how few protective measures had been put in place. Civil authorities overlooked natures warning signals. Thats a little white box behind me is a very famous tide gauge its the second oldest gauge in the whole United States has been faithfully measuring the tides the rise and fall of the tides every day for since the last one hundred fifty years or more. In recent decades sea levels have risen significantly in the new york region increasing by four millimeters compared to three millimeters in the rest of the world. This difference may be explained by complex geological processes occurring on the American Continent. But this rising. We measure here up to date is mainly whats called the. Continental rebound from the last ice age when the whole north American Continent was covered in ice. After the ice melt of the land lifted up like a loaf of bread been baked in the crust rises but at the edges here new york is actually going down the whole thing is tilting. And so even though youre in the middle of the country its going up here its gone down and its going down about thirty five centimeters every one hundred yes but that one example right. With with Climate Change from excess burning of fossil fuels oil coal and gas and the up was fair we can expect the water level here to rise one or two meters within the eight before the end of the century and thats a lot thats a lot to worry about. Me. Behind me was new york harbor and pass the statue of liberty we have the ocean for many years ive been proposing that we need a regional solution to the protection of new york city and northern new jersey not just the new york city solution not just the new jersey solution but a combined solution. The plan is to construct european style storm surge barriers across the entrance to the harbor where that where the hudson river empties into the ocean. Oceanography Malcolm Bowman proposes a barrier to be constructed off the coast of new york and new jersey. This structure tens of kilometers long would provide protection for the city from the effects of storms. Many countries decided long ago to build similar structures. In the netherlands a third of its land is below sea level the doc should built over twenty five kilometers of front barrier since the nine hundred fifty s. The one that used to shelter is nine kilometers long and the longest in the well. In england downstream from london the thames barrier protects the city from seasonal shots. They sign of defense has proved effective against tide and storms but new yorkers have declined his options. Of the storm surge barriers have been out there. Really since the you know a little bit for sandy and then even in the aftermath of sandy the conversation the girl allowed or theres a false sense of security that comes with this idea that theres going to be a big wall thats going to protect us from the ocean instead we need to find a better way to reengage with water and recognize that were going to do everything we can to reduce that flood risk in projects that are that fit the local environment in a much better way that address the long term Sea Level Rise condition that also provide protection against coastal storms and that we can begin working on right now. Reconnecting with water being in harmony with the environment and adapting these terms describe a new concept that of resilience and their consume support this movement believe that new york cannot totally protect itself from floods therefore its best option is to accent its fate prepare to bounce back reinvent itself and live with the threat. Its our vision for resilience is that our neighborhoods our economy our essential Public Services are ready to withstand that emerge stronger from both the impacts of Climate Change and other twenty First Century threats and its really its the linkage of those two things its the reduced impacts and its the quicker recovery times that really in compas what we mean by resiliency here in new york city. Urban resilience is the ability of a city not just to bounce back to. And grow in the face of both acute events which we call sharks and chronic events that we cost stresses were looking for Better Outcomes in cities. In shocks me in how quickly the city cities get back to normal how are they able to go on and you look at new york city for instance. Over the last fifteen years that had nine eleven terrorist attacks or big blackout as well as the crash. And the housing crisis that affected its primary industry the Financial Services sector and yet the city has been able to weather the events. Along with Superstorm Sandy and really continue to thrive in the face of them so that that looks like a little bit of what resilience in the. Reconstruction of new york depends on its capacity for resilience and on taking into account the climatic threat beginning his second term of office a few days after the passage of Hurricane Sandy u. S. President barack obama wanted to rethink the city from a more global perspective under the title of rebuild by design obamas project has been intrusted to a Global Expert in Water Management dutchman. This specialist believes in the need for a holistic approach. I remember my first interview when i moved to new york in d. C. And the interview was on. And the first question was asked so mr overing are you going to build this storm surge barrier next to the verizon or rich and safeguard the region forever and i said no because it will. Now there is no Silver Bullet when it comes to Climate Change you need a lot of Silver Bullets you need a multitude of interventions that on a regional programatic scale during times to come can actually build the resiliency. We invest it months in collaborating with hundreds of organizations thousands of people selecting ten interdisciplinary world talented teams that worked in the region to only do research to captured or regions vulnerabilities and interdependencies also captured their stories the experiences of all the people that were hit hard by sandy and out of that research a real regional understanding emerge. This process has led to the creation of several open air laboratories intended to invent Global Solutions for new york their objective rethink urban planning to ensure better protection for the city while reconciling it with floodwater. Focusing on Manhattan Project intitled the. Dry line embodies this new approach. Though in a way the the big u. Is inspired by the high line the high line is this elevated park here on the west side of manhattan that has been. Placed on top of a decommissioned rail yard. This former elevated Railway Track in the heart of manhattan has been converted into a prominent extremely popular with new yorkers. So the design process we have used is that we took all of the flood recommendations that have been developed for the entire Lower Manhattan weve asked people what are their concerns what are their demands what are their dreams for their waterfront and try to see if we can take the necessity and the utility of protection and combine it with the dreams and the desires of the local community. And as a result of the dry line its almost like an urban chameleon but it changes character and appearance depending on what neighborhood it goes through sometimes it it occupies the space under the elevated highway and turns it into pavilions or or or tipping crap forms other times its almost like a giant bench and all times its part of the landscape that races and actually protects the park on the waterfront from the noise of the highway but also protects the city from from flooding. South of manhattan Staten Island was seriously affected by Hurricane Sandy in two thousand and twelve. He architect seek to approach the question of flood protection one addressing environmental issues. As Landscape Architects we have a much wider view of the world and how cultural and Natural Systems are interrelated our project is really one thats trying to essentially adapt to an environment that is rapidly already shifting we have acidifying waters we have Sea Level Rise which is projected in some cases to be thirty two inches or upwards of thirty two inches in the outer harbor area which is an incredible amount if you can picture that to address this challenge the architect of his considered placing natural obstacles on the seabed along this coast. We will need to be thinking about how to live next to the water and with the water to have multiple lines of defense and the point of this project is also that it is a break water that is engineered to withstand wave action and the highest waves you know where we are designing it to certain wave heights and wave philosophies. The urban planners of the rebuild by Design Project a redesigning the city to coexist with water while respecting the environment. Today only a part of new york is concerned with protective infrastructures much of the population of new york therefore remains exposed to flood risks. How can one protect cities from flooding without inclosing them within walls and barriers. In europe hamburg successfully address this challenge in the inner City District of hafen city. Exposed as it is to the north sea this german city has experienced impressive floods in recent decades. This is one of the areas of hamburg which are regularly flooded in case of the heavy storms or. For instance in ninety sixty two when we had a very heavy storm surge the water was standing up here and if the heaviest storm surge we were hit was standing up here and to deal with this type of hazards that people have here and the houses these big steel doors which are closed in case thats the water is coming. Situated in a flood zone and the new district of half the city has been entirely elevated to protect it from fine and storms on the north sea. To have an city is an island and so river elbe estrada are and it is supposed to bear forty five thousand jobs and tremendous development in terms of residential and commercial development. So how can you protect this area against say high Flooding Risk coming from the north sea we decided to raise a learned in order to leave the linkage between the land and to water in terms of visibility and on the outside to protect their area and. This solution addresses the need for cities to expand and provides an answer to the risk of flooding. The concept of huff and city in terms of flood protection and integrating a flood Protection System was a new urban living design style for buildings is extremely unique internationally. On the one hand side it is a Protection System which does not exist. In our new peaks city of the world and secondly it keeps the relationship between water and public spaces as a private ones its interesting point is that it is a joint vision earth protecting this part of the city for the next hundred or two hundred years. Half and city concept can be very much a model for other cities especially when you build parts of the city and you then you can really raise the land and not avoid to keep a big distance between the preferred waterfront locations on the other hand and having a protective frisk a secure location to build on so i think and locations for example in the northern u. S. Or in other areas of the world that can be a forward looking base concept it could also be a concept for many asian cities which are built on new low lying flood plains and thats the benefit of having flood protected solution and building cities in your close to the waterfront could be spreading from the idea of half an city to many more places which are now looking into solutions to be developed. In future the outskirts of big urban centers will see developments built over the water to provide better protection against funding to answer increasing threats of flooding urban planners everywhere are trying to protect big cities from the attacks of the sea. In some cases they are even reshaping the coastal landscape. The area were living in now is called the entropy. Which essentially the air are where human. Impact is the greatest force on the geological changes of our planet and. That human impact we dam rivers we flood the valleys we cause glaciers to melt we cause deforestation. We transform landscapes with different fields of agriculture and we are causing sea levels to rise and water crisis is the number one global risk when it comes to crisis and it is hitting our societies our communities and our cities worse than ever and its going to increase over time are you ready for a change in the risk now where no two to four billion people will be devastated the next decades when it comes to water and its too much water because of Sea Level Rise and surges or too little water and drought and a bad quality of the water because manmade pollution manmade environmentalists test. For human environmental and economic challenges are huge but coastal cities at the center of this dynamic well have to adapt. The question is will resilience become the best form of defense against the threat of floods. We have to work and build a new mindset we talk about this idea of resilience that resilience is not just about building hard infrastructure and building protective walls but its about changing the mindset of citizens changing the way governments and people who manage cities think about the future you have to basically be ready to accept the unpredictable accept and embrace uncertainty its no longer a world in which you can predict and plan and you will know exactly what the outcome is going to be five or ten years down the road. Were not going to ultimately stop the risk of flooding but its also about how do we manage that both before during and after some people say there will might be a sandy. Yes or no i mean no to storms are ever the same. I like to storms strike the colors of exactly the same place but there will be other catastrophes because of where new york city is its in the path of horror that we have every year the next one will be different but it could be just as devastating. We all want a future that is actually able to deal with increasing risk if we look at the facts in all the reports the burden is upon us to deal with those uncertain so if we want that future for our children and grandchildren if we want to be able to live tomorrow as we live today or even better we really have to invest more to be able to deal with these increasing threat. To. Kick off life yes well probably be the favorite at the world cup in russia no kidding around germany or defending world and confit cup champions plus we had a good qualifying round the pressure is always there but i think in russia itll be even higher. Great expectations how do you deal with them and what have. Ends of their dashed. Thirty nine w. The top stories followed across social media and share your comments and content welcome to. News. United against Climate Change. Big challenges for the twenty third u. N. Climate conference in bonn. Our nations working to meet their Paris Agreement targets cop twenty three this week on t. W. News. Tells us stirring stories so. It makes us laugh. And cry the trouble and smile of magical images and big emotions enough. To know the magazine to every weekend on d w. This is a w. News live from burlesque sky high political stakes and of relenting night the next few hours could decide whether our love makeover made chancellor of germany a talks to form a new Coalition Government have bogged down
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