Not so long ago, floods were considered something mostly common for rural areas, farms, and villages located next to rivers or big lakes. However, recently floods have become such an ordinary urban event like a heavy snow blizzard or heatwaves.
Moreover, experts claim that floods may become more common in big cities than they are on the outskirts and county sides.
In this article, we shall try to understand why floods are happening more and more often in big cities and how we can rearrange infrastructure, architecture, and our everyday habits to protect our city homes and businesses from massive water damage.
Every city has its own climate change.
If you look at the thermal map of the earth, you will definitely notice that certain points appear particularly hot. In most cases, those points are large cities with intensively growing populations.
While the temperature is rising all over the planet, cities with their primarily solid-material landscape and architecture act like heat accumulators creating their own microclimate. We all know that solid materials accumulate temperature more intensively due to their higher density.
In other words, +30C (86F) will feel differently when you stand in an open field or some valley or on a city street. In the latest case, you practically find yourself on a frying pan that instantly accumulates and reflects high temperature instead of dispersing it like soil does.
Moreover, experts say that rock, concrete, and other solid materials don`t get cold faster than soil despite common belief. Vice versa, they have the ability to withhold heal in their core and continue releasing it long after the air temperature goes down.
What does it have to do with floods? We know that floods are m mostly caused by heavy rainfall, which in its turn is caused by intensive water evaporation. Put a drop of water on a frying pan and on the soil at the same temperature, and you will understand the problem.
Water simply evaporates most intensively from the urban surface and gets condensed faster, causing more and more massive rainfall. Those clouds simply don`t have time to be pushed away from cities.
An this leads us to the next reason why floods happen much more often in cities today.
Water has nowhere to go in the city.
It is a continuous negotiation between various architects and urbanists - whether cities should preserve the natural terrain of the area or should they be covered with solid materials like tarmac or pavements?
On the one hand, the more "covered" our streets are, the cleaner they will be. Indeed, rainfall or snowmelt will cause much more damage and contamination once there are many open spaces with soil such as flower beds, turf, etc.
However, those solid materials might be the main reason why floods happen at all. When rain falls, or snow melts in a rural area, the water mostly gets soaked into the soil, while its excess streams towards the nearest waterbody. It is a natural, well-balanced process.
However, the more we cover our streets with pavement and asphalt, the fewer chances we leaver for water to soak anywhere, and it simply has no other chance but to go down the streets, turning them into rivers chained in concrete.
And while sewage infrastructure is designed to lead water away, its maintenance often appears too complicated and costly, especially when we talk about cities with major social, humanitarian, and other significant issues most common for megapolis.
Unfortunately, local authorities often try to solve technical issues of maintaining streets clean, covering them with asphalt and pavement, causing even bigger problems.
By the way, numerous researches show that thought-through urban landscape planned and executed by qualified experts may guarantee city cleanness while leaving enough open soil for the water to soak in.
For example, rain gardens, which are becoming more and more popular among private homeowners, can work great at a large scale preventing floods and keeping whole cities clean and green at the same time.
How to reduce floods in urban areas?
Yes, the growth of urban areas, their population, and infrastructure inevitably increase the risk of floods in those particular regions. But does it mean that the threat is inevitable, and people will simply have to learn to live with constant flooding, investing in flood insurance, and hoping for the best?
While it is impossible (and fairly unreasonable) to try and stop city growth, there is a number of measures the urban population can take today to secure and protect their property and wellbeing in the future.
One of those measures is to integrate natural terrain and water bodies into the city's landscape. Cities often get flooded "from within" with rivers and lakes that might have been hidden into underground pipes to clear space for new roads and streets. For example, Moscow, Russia, is one of the bright examples of this case. There is a significant river called Moika, which was once one of the biggest water bodies in the area but was then hidden into an underground pipe to clear urban space. However, almost annually, the river reminds of itself, causing massive floods in the city`s central district.
Such examples are pretty frequent worldwide, from China to the United States, and experts claim that "releasing" the underground rivers is the #1 solution for urban floods.
Another urban anti-flooding solution is to build cities considering the flood hazard from the very beginning - elevate the roads and bridges, introduce waterproof materials, and integrate water into the landscape rather than try and avoid the flooding at all.
For example, residents of the area along Napa River, California, have technically reinvented local terrain, making the river and its ecosystem an integral part of the urban landscape. The plan involves bridge reconstruction, levee setbacks, a floodwall, moving of vulnerable structures, detention basins, larger stormwater conveyances, and a high-flow bypass channel.
While your local authorities and landscape experts will develop innovative anti-flooding solutions for your town, you can take active measures to protect your own property. Dam Easy flood barriers are an efficient solution that will keep floodwater away from your house. Moreover, they are easy to install, which is most important in case of flash floods that happen most frequently in cities. And, of course, they are unbelievably compact and easy to store, which is another significant factor once you live in an urban estate with restricted storage capacity.
Contact Dam easy today and learn how Flood Gates and other solutions will help you protect your city house or business and avoid costly consequences or urban floods.
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