doctorswithoutborders:

South Sudan: Preparing for the Rainy Season

At the Yida refugee camp in South Sudan, where the population has increased five-fold in the past year, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is treating growing numbers of patients and preparing for the additional hardships that will come with the approaching rainy season.

laboratoryequipment:

Communities Work to Hold Back Storm-Swollen Waterways

A tiny, flood-prone community breathed easier after shoring up a makeshift levee holding back the rain-swollen Mississippi River. Other Midwest communities scrambled to fend off waterways that threatened to overflow as more storms marched through the region.

Volunteers hustled earlier this week to shore up weak spots in a levee hastily built last week to stop the Mississippi from overrunning the flood-weary hamlet of Clarksville. At times toiling in heavy rain, crews built a second wall of dirt and sandbags behind the original barrier and now calm has been restored. The Mississippi appeared to be receding, ever so slowly, from the community 70 miles north of St. Louis.

Via: laboratoryequipment

Annual spring floods. Short term approaches.

mothernaturenetwork:

Why you’re paying for everyone’s flood insurance

Two members of the Natural Resources Defense Council explain how the taxpayers, coastal homeowners and climate change are all connected.

Floods. Venice, Italy. Venice is one of the most beautiful places in the world. It’s also sinking, and probably unsaveable. See my Venice tag for more posts on this crazy city.

boston:

Winter weather - http://bo.st/ZvwUqA

ScienceDaily: Heat waves, storms, flooding: Climate change to profoundly affect U.S. Midwest in coming decades ›

massurban:

The Atlantic Cities: 

“The Generator Is the Machine of the Moment”

In the days that followed Hurricane Sandy, the developer of the luxury condominium 150 Charles Street hunkered down with his team of architects and engineers to rethink the building’s design.

Just steps from the Hudson River, the construction site was partially flooded. “Their mandate was to figure out how the building would have stayed open in a storm like this,” said Steven Witkoff, the developer. “They came back with a list of five things, and we implemented every single one.”

The efforts delayed the project by some six weeks and added as much as $3 million to its cost.

It was one of a number of projects that convened their engineers and construction teams to reconsider their plans after the rising waters rushed over the city’s embankments and into the basements of countless residential buildings across Lower Manhattan.

Now, more than two months after the storm caused millions of dollars in damage, novel and costly waterproofing techniques are being employed, including the addition of backup generators and floodgates, and the relocation of mechanical equipment. The owners of buildings that predate the flooding are also looking at these measures, although retroactive installation is so complex and costly that some may decide not to do anything.

“If you are in the flood zone and you are marketing a new high-end property, it will need to stand up to the test of another superstorm,” said Stephen G. Kliegerman, the executive director of development marketing for Halstead Property. “I think buyers would happily pay to be relatively reassured they wouldn’t be terribly inconvenienced in case of a natural disaster.” [Photo: Evan Sung for The New York Times]

This is a great read for adaptation and infrastructure folks. Purchases of large-scale pumps, generators, and other flood proofing measures are on the rise, especially in storm prone and coastal cities. I was walking along 5th Avenue recently and saw a motley work crew pumping the flooded basement of a uber fancy high-rise apartment building. “Why are you taking pictures of hoses?” my friend asked me. “Invest now,” I told her, “pumps are the future.”

fotojournalismus:

People struggle through floodwaters in Jakarta’s central business district on January 17, 2013 in Jakarta, Indonesia. Thousands of Indonesians were displaced and the capital was covered in many key areas in over a meter of water after days of heavy rain.

[Credit : Ed Wray/Getty Images]

Palestine. Floods. More.

wncworldnewsvideo:

Brazil Flooding Leaves Hundred 10,000+ Homeless

• Scores dead
• Dozens missing
• 10,000 people homeless
• Landslides burying roads and highways, making emergency response difficult
• Months of rains caused the Amazon River to flood villages and towns
• Flood waters headed to Peru, where massive evacuations are in the works

More at Reuters

One way to adapt subways to flooding: balloons.

“The goal is to provide flooding protection for transportation tunnels,” said John Fortune, who is managing the project for the federal Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate.

The idea is a simple one: rather than retrofitting tunnels with metal floodgates or other expensive structures, the project aims to use a relatively cheap inflatable plug to hold back floodwaters.

In theory, it would be like blowing up a balloon inside a tube. But in practice, developing a plug that is strong, durable, quick to install and foolproof to deploy is a difficult engineering task, one made even more challenging because of the pliable, relatively lightweight materials required. Via

I gave a lecture to undergrads the other day at Westfield State University. I was terrified. Most of my talks are to professionals and lawyers. But undergrads? Yikes! I was afraid they’d eat me alive! 

It went surprisingly well. The students were energetic and pumped to talk about cities, climate change, and infrastructure. The professor, a good friend, was miffed that the students asked me more questions than her on a daily basis. “There’s a trick,” I revealed to her. “Wait 7 seconds after you ask, “Any questions?”. This will give the audience time to reflect and form a question.” I digress.

We discussed damage from Hurricane Sandy. And we chatted about how to adapt New York City’s infrastructure to these bigger storms that we’re seeing. Two very smart students asked about why subway tunnels flood so easily. From my repertoire of engineering solutions (and admittedly slow recall), I described two ways cities are updating their tubes.

The first is to reinforce the subway’s walls and install better pumps. Most walls were built from stone and mortar, then covered with tiles in the 1950s or earlier. So, now, they’re leaky and crumbling. The other way is to raise the entrances to the tunnels. That way, the flood water would not be able to flow down the escalators. Obviously neither are very cheap, but these solutions are not a deal breaker either.

Since Hurricane Sandy, The NYTimes has been running a series of adaptation-related articles. Several articles asked tough questions like, why are we insist on living in risky areas? And why does the federal government incentivize cities to rebuild in those dangerous areas? I’ll post some links soon.

Meanwhile, check out this fancy design idea to plug tunnels in the event of a flood.Alarge balloon is installed into the side of a wall. When there is a threat, the train stops service, the balloon plops down on the track, and then proceeds to inflate.

There are dozens of problems with this system. “Who pays?” and how to test it immediately come to mind. Will fares go up to pay for these balloons? What happens if one fails and there are workers in the tunnel?

What do you think? Will these thingamabobs work?

Venice is flooded ›

Hurricane Sandy deathtoll rising, now at 65. Haiti hit hardest. Click for story. ›

Thousands of homes at risk from climate change: report ›

Unlike New Orleans, New York City is above sea level. Yet the city is second only to New Orleans in the number of people living less than four feet above high tide — nearly 200,000 New Yorkers, according to the research group Climate Central.

The waters on the city’s doorstep have been rising roughly an inch a decade over the last century as oceans have warmed and expanded. But according to scientists advising the city, that rate is accelerating, because of environmental factors, and levels could rise two feet higher than today’s by midcentury. More frequent flooding is expected to become an uncomfortable reality.

With higher seas, a common storm could prove as damaging as the rare big storm or hurricane is today, scientists say. Were sea levels to rise four feet by the 2080s, for example, 34 percent of the city’s streets could lie in the flood-risk zone, compared with just 11 percent now, a 2011 study commissioned by the state said.

Via NYTimes steady rebuke of Bloomberg’s climate plans New York Faces Rising Seas and Slow City Action

Isaac. Still dangerous.

Via NOAA