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Flood - Flood defenses planning and management

Flood - Flood defenses planning and management: Encyclopedia II - Flood - Flood defenses planning and management

In western countries, rivers prone to flooding are often carefully managed. Defences such as levees, bunds, reservoirs, and weirs are used to prevent rivers from bursting their banks. Coastal flooding has been addressed in Europe with coastal defenses, such as sea walls and beach nourishment. London is protected from flooding by a huge mechanical barrier across the River Thames, which is raised when the water level reaches a certain point (see Thames Barrier). Venice has a similar arrangement, although it is already una ...

Flood: Encyclopedia II - Flood - Flood defenses planning and management

Flood - Flood defenses planning and management

London is protected from flooding by a huge mechanical barrier across the River Thames, which is raised when the water level reaches a certain point (see Thames Barrier).
Venice has a similar arrangement, although it is already unable to cope with very high tides, and will become increasingly inadequate if anticipated rises in sea level occur.
The biggest and most elaborate flood defences can be found in the Netherlands, where they are referred to as Delta Works with the Oosterscheldedam as its crowning achievement. These works were build in response to the North Sea flood of 1953 of the south western part of the Netherlands. The Dutch had already build one of worlds largest dams in the north: the Afsluitdijk in response to a flooding in 1916.

In some flood-prone areas with high population density, such as parts of the Netherlands, England, and New Orleans and Mississippi River Delta. planning laws have been used to prevent building on flood plains. In some cases, pressure from developers has caused these controls to be eroded, with an increasing number of new developments reliant on artificial defences for protection from floodwaters.

Bangladesh has not experienced catastrophic coastal flooding since 1995, but the country relies heavily on foreign support and technology to combat flooding. The United States has donated hurricane shelters to the country, and India provides the Bangladesh government with weather forecasting to give the country time to plan its response to hurricanes.

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Flood defenses planning and management", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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