In recent times, the problem of home and building flooding has been experienced in many parts of the world, especially those which receive heavy rainfalls. Flooding can also be caused by unusual high tides, failure of dams and retention ponds and is the result of climate change. There are many ways it can be avoided or managed. Since it leads to a lot of property damage, there is an urgent need to implement flood protection and control methods.
Building dams and water gates
Dams, reservoirs and water gate barriers are some of the most used and effective ways to avoid floods and control them. Dams help in holding the water back and avoid excess amounts of water from flowing in towards habitat or cities. Many large sized dams have floor control reservations in which the level of reservoir must be kept below a certain elevation before the rainy season. Water gate barriers on the other hand are rapid-response barriers which self-deploy using the weight of the water.
Diversion canals
Floods can also be controlled by redirecting excess water to floodways and purpose-built canals. These floodways in turn divert the flow of water to holding ponds where there is less risk of flooding.
Self-closing floor barrier
This is another flood defense system which is created to protect property and people from inland waterway floods which result due to rapid melting snow, gales or rains. These are more useful for protecting residential properties and even whole communities and are constantly deployed in flood risks or situations. These are already built and used in many countries and cities like Belgium, Thailand, Ireland, Italy and United Kingdom etc.
River defenses
There are many countries in the world which are very prone to floods and this is why defenses are created to manage them. Some types of defenses include bunds, levees, weirs and reservoirs. These are used to prevent rivers from overflowing their banks. If these defenses fail, other emergency measures are used and some of them include sandbags, hydrosacks and portable inflatable tubes.
Coastal defenses
There are many parts of Europe and America which are prone to coastal flooding. And in order to deal with coastal defenses, methods like sea walls, barrier islands and beach nourishment are used. In some cases, tide gates are also used in conjunction with culverts and dykes. These defenses are placed at the mouth of small rivers and streams. They help to close incoming tides to prevent tidal waters from moving in an upland direction. They open during the outgoing tides to allow waters to drain out through culverts.
Flood protection can help save millions of dollars every year all over the world and also prevent from wastage of resources and loss of lives. It is important for countries and companies to take this problem seriously and deploy methods needed.