Diluvial distractions
- Louisa
- Dec 11, 2019
- 1 min read
Updated: Jan 10, 2020
Here's where I'm keeping interesting flood-related bits and pieces which I haven't been able to fit anywhere else. Seen something to go here? Let me know!
Flash floods: why are they so hard to forecast? And a NASA project which aims to do just that.
Smart sewers: when the Internet of Things is out of control, but also helps you predict urban flooding.
Evacuation plans: we keep failing people with disabilities during disasters; how can we do better?
Floating houses: solve all of your coastal flooding problems at once, maybe cause a few new ones.
Plan for your dam: a deep dive into the floods in Kerala last year; read it and you too will immediately revisit your dam emergency action plan.
Disasters and women: how flooding in Kibera is a gendered issue.
Sponge cities: China tackles urban flooding from the ground up.
GLOFs in the Peruvian Andes: boggling cautionary tale about what happens when you try and impose and early warning system with no local buy-in.
Medieval flood engineering: flood control and adaptation to climate change in 13th-centry Angkor, I love this stuff.
La Belle Sauvage is exactly what I was thinking of! I loved the tiny glimpse we got of it in the first episode of the TV series.
Sponge cities don't really use new techniques, but the systematisation and the level of ambition (capturing 70% of storm water) are impressive (plus it's an amazing name, much better than Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems tbh). It's the sort of thing that's much easier to build in from the beginning though, and I think that there have been some serious challenges retrofitting existing neighbourhoods in the pilot cities in China.
Technically I think it's feasible to replicate elsewhere, but again, the cost (and logistics!) of retrofitting. A lot of cities that have serious surface…
La Belle Sauvage gets added to the floods in literature list. But I also like the Chinese sponge cities idea! How easy would that be to replicate elsewhere?