Worried about rising sea levels? Go to the Netherlands — they have lots of experience with such things
engineering | foundations and infrastructure by paul whelan
soggy bottom architecture
rising sea levels raft foundations landscape reservoir control Netherlands the Venice solution
According to a pair of studies published in the journal Science, global warm- ing has already committed our planet to rising sea-levels. Jonathan Overpeck, an earth scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson who co-authored both studies, says that the sea level will rise at rates of up to a metre per one hundred years — and it could go faster. Humans are vulnerable because we build most of our cities in low coastal areas. The recent example of New Orleans and the ongoing struggle between the Netherlands and the sea are reminders of our future reality. We know that the water is rising, so what can we do? The obvious answer is to reduce our dependence on carbon....but humans are catastrophically bad at taking pre- ventative actions. Inevitably we will have to adapt to global warming and all its consequences, including higher sea levels. However, there is a continuum of available responses ranging from holding back the water, making our buildings float, or simply doing nothing.
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Beavering Away If we decide to fight the seas and hold the water back, the Netherlands offers planning, engineering and politi- cal lessons. Their extensive systems of dykes, dams and drainage strategies are designed to keep land below sea- level dry. Rising sea levels threaten the entire country. Recently a Dutch landscape firm, H+N+S, have pro- posed a new response to the triple threat of rising sea levels, subsiding land and increasing rains. To dampen the impact of ever-increasing storm surges, H+N+S pro- pose selectively channeling the water behind the defences. H+N+S advocate catchment systems for fresh and salt water and resevoirs for excess rainfall. This strategy will require relinquishing land so strenuously won from the sea. The landscape will change from traditional farmland with water chanels and ditches to one of raised lakes and resevoirs – a kind of non-sensical contour map. How- ever, it could be the only way the Netherlands can save its country. Regardless of the engineering and planning, the Dutch rely on a highly centralised government to construct and maintain their sea defenses. Their system of participa- tory and centralised democracy is a political anomoly and I fully expect that fighting the sea would more likely result in less-friendly autocratic government.
Water Storage in the Delta Metropolis, H+S+N Landsc- hapsarchitecten, Utrecht. 1 The evolving water-task is formulated as a stimulant water realm; allure and con- nective element for leisure, investors, fauna and flora. 2 Seemingly neglectable height differences are of particular importance with maintaining water in the flat - tish Netherlands 3 Main components of the new water system: location for peak water retention, res- ervoir for salt water storage, reservoir for sweet water storage, and an enlivened in- terconnective water system.
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