Next Generation Infrastructure: Principles for Post-Industrial Public Works by Hillary Brown

Author:Hillary Brown [Brown, Hillary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Architecture, General, Urban & Land Use Planning
ISBN: 9781597268059
Google: OC7lngEACAAJ
Publisher: Island Press
Published: 2014-05-15T23:42:59.592776+00:00

The projects explored in this chapter focus on improving resilience to coastal and river flooding. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, sea level is rising—and at an accelerated rate. This is caused by global warming’s melting of glaciers, ice caps, and ice sheets.8 At the same time, increased temperatures are producing changes in weather patterns and increasing drought and evaporation—conditions that will demand enhancement of existing water resources. Infrastructural adaptations to water stress and scarcity will be addressed in the next chapter.

Coastal Flooding Adaptations: Hardening the Coast

Ten percent of the world’s population lives on the 2 percent of the earth’s land area designated as “low-elevation coastal zones.”9 These settlements are at the greatest risk of damage from sea-level rise and storm surges, as well as seawall breaches, erosion, loss of wetlands, and an influx of sediments. Because critical urban systems such as power stations, wastewater treatment and solid-waste management plants, and pumping stations have historically been sited along rivers or on or near coasts, they, along with their associated substations, gas pipelines, and landfills, are subject to inundation. Tunnels and coastal airports, also typically located on oceanfront sites, are subject to flooding, and bridges are vulnerable to river scouring (water currents abrading bridge abutments), which can undermine their structural integrity. Finally, widespread interdependencies mean that inundation in one infrastructural sector can trigger shutdowns in others: for example, transportation failures can prevent fuel from reaching power stations, and brownouts can impair or halt operations at water filtration and wastewater-treatment plants. Low-lying nations are the most vulnerable to the risks associated with cascading failures.

In the Netherlands and Japan, the prospect of major flooding in urban areas has led to sophisticated water-management policies. Both countries are contemplating even greater adaptive measures. In the Netherlands, the greatest threat comes from the fact that 27 percent of the country’s landmass—home to 60 percent of the population and the source of about 70 percent of the nation’s gross national product—is below sea level.10 Among the changes already detected in the Netherlands are higher river discharges, caused by more-intense winter rains; soil subsidence; increasing salinity in the water table; and growing demands for water during heat-induced droughts. Japan’s primary concerns are that higher temperatures will cause lower rice yields, and that storm surges will threaten its 1.3 million coastal residents.

Structurally and Mechanically Refusing the Sea in the Netherlands

Living within one of the great deltas of the world, where the Rhine, Meuse, Waal, and Schelde Rivers join the North Sea, the Dutch have perfected the art of hydraulic engineering as a defensive response to inundation and storm surge. The area defined by the rivers’ outflows is home to the Netherlands’ 16.6 million people, as well as to some of the most productive wetlands and agricultural soil to be found anywhere. By manipulating an integrated system of dikes, dunes, pumps, ditches, and canals, the Dutch have drained indigenous bogs, mudflats, and lakes, transforming them into productive polders—reclaimed, low-lying farmland. With a line of primary defenses stretching more than 3,500 kilometers (2,175 miles), the nation has largely managed intermittent flooding.

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