<
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240920-our-plan-worked-how-vienna-prepared-itself-for-a-5000-year-flood>
'
Storm Boris is the latest deluge in one of the most flood-plagued periods in
Europe in the past 500 years, but one city escaped relatively unscathed. The
steps Vienna took to prepare for extreme rainfall may hold lessons for how
other cities can face deluges to come.
When record rainfall brought by Storm Boris doused Vienna on 15 September, the
impact looked dramatic: flooded roads, evacuated houses, a gentle stream that
turned into a roaring torrent. In the space of only five days, between twice
and five times as much rain fell on the city and other parts of Austria as in
an entire average month of September.
And yet, considering the onslaught of water, "we got away quite lightly", noted
a Viennese journalist, referring to reports of an estimated ten lightly injured
people, and 15 evacuated houses in the city. "On the whole, the [city's]
ingenious flood management system resisted the masses of water," concluded
another local journalist.
In fact, evidence from previous big floods suggests that a number of protective
strategies used by Vienna, and Austria more generally, are proving effective –
and offering vital lessons to others battling increasingly extreme weather.
"Austria has really invested in flood management over the past decades, not
least because we had two big floods, in 2002 and 2013," says Günter Blöschl, a
hydrologist and director of the Centre for Water Resource Systems of the Vienna
University of Technology, who has helped shape Austria's flood risk management
strategy.
In Vienna, a flood defence system developed decades ago has played a crucial
role in protecting the city, Blöschl explains.
"Vienna's flood defence system is designed to cope with a flood discharge of
14,000 cubic metres per second – that's equivalent to a 5,000-year flood," he
says. A flood of that size last occurred in 1501, he adds. During the flood
over the weekend, around 10,000 cubic metres per second flowed through Vienna's
waterways, "significantly below the system's 14,000-cubic-metre capacity," he
adds. "Without this system, there would have been widespread flooding."'
Via
Reasons to be Cheerful:
<
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/what-were-reading-california-rat-poison-law-mountain-lions/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
