{"id":5608,"date":"2013-09-08T13:48:52","date_gmt":"2013-09-08T17:48:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=5608"},"modified":"2013-09-08T14:14:36","modified_gmt":"2013-09-08T18:14:36","slug":"flood-control-measures-encourage-settling-too-close-and-provoke-severe-flooding-events","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/09\/flood-control-measures-encourage-settling-too-close-and-provoke-severe-flooding-events.html","title":{"rendered":"Flood control measures encourage settling too close and provoke severe flooding events"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nFlood control to keep water out of houses seems like a good idea,\r\nbut it turns out that it causes the flood control measures to keep\r\nneeding to be raised higher, and it encourages people to build\r\ntoo close to flooding areas, plus\r\n“rare and catastrophic events take place”.\r\nLike the 2009 “700 year flood” and the\r\n\r\nfour or more floods this year<\/a>\r\nthat have overflowed the Withlacoochee Wastewater Treatment Plant.\r\nIn our case, there are also the issues of widespread clearcutting\r\nand buildings and streets with impervious cover.\r\nThe local runoff containment requirements in the various local government zoning codes may be\r\nlike levees: “flood control\r\nstructures might even increase flood risk as protection from\r\nfrequent flooding reduces perceptions of risk”.\r\n

\r\nThis encourages human settlements in floodplain areas, which are then\r\nvulnerable to high-consequence and low-probability events.\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\nMuch simpler just not to give out building permits for flood zones.\r\nOr we could\r\n\r\nput medical buildings right next to a creek<\/a>,\r\nassuming\r\n\r\nbecause it’s never flooded it never will<\/a>….\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\nSocio-hydrology: conceptualising human-flood interactions<\/a>,\r\nG. Di Baldassarre, A. Viglione, G. Carr, L. Kuil, J. L. Salinas, and G. Bloschl,\r\n\r\nHydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 17, 3295\u20133303, 2013<\/a>\r\ndoi:10.5194\/hess-17-3295-2013,\r\n\u00a9 Author(s) 2013. CC Attribution 3.0 License.\r\n

\r\n\r\nAbstract.<\/strong> Over history, humankind has tended to settle near streams\r\nbecause of the role of rivers as transportation corridors and the\r\nfertility of riparian areas. However, human settlements in\r\nfloodplains have been threatened by the risk of flooding. Possible\r\nresponses have been to resettle away and\/or modify the river system\r\nby building flood control structures. This has led to a complex web\r\nof interactions and feedback mechanisms between hydrological and\r\nsocial processes in settled floodplains. This paper is an attempt to\r\nconceptualise these interplays for hypothetical human-flood systems.\r\nWe develop a simple, dynamic model to represent the interactions and\r\nfeedback loops between hydrological and social processes. The model\r\nis then used to explore the dynamics of the human-flood system and\r\nthe effect of changing individual characteristics, including\r\nexternal forcing such as technological development. The results show\r\nthat the conceptual model is able to reproduce reciprocal effects\r\nbetween floods and people as well as the emergence of typical\r\npatterns. For instance, when levees are built or raised to protect\r\nfloodplain areas, their presence not only reduces the frequency of\r\nflooding, but also exacerbates high water levels. Then, because of\r\nthis exacerbation, higher flood protection levels are required by\r\nsociety. As a result, more and more flooding events are avoided, but\r\nrare and catastrophic events take place.\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nFig. 1. Schematic of human adjustments to flooding: (a) settling away from the river, and (b) raising levees or dikes.:\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n\"Fig.<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nFig. 2. Historical evolution of the high water levels (left) and levees (right) in the Adige River at Masi (Italy) between 1600 and 1933 (after Da Deppo et al., 2004).:\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\n\"Fig.<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nFig. 3. Loop diagram showing how hydrological, economical, political, technological, and social processes are all interlinked:\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n\"Fig.<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nMaybe if we become aware of this problem we’ll stop doing it.\r\n<\/P>\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Flood control to keep water out of houses seems like a good idea, but it turns out that it causes the flood control measures to keep needing to be raised higher, and it encourages people to build too close to flooding areas, plus “rare and catastrophic events take place”. Like the 2009 “700 year flood” […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[325,2,21,32,73,289,3,54,55],"tags":[6943,6935,304,292,8701,8764,8699,326,10,8702,12,7,6938,8711,8715,1017,4,8731,3445,6937,8700,6941,6,8726,4217,8727,58,295,6257,6942],"class_list":["post-5608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-glpc","category-government","category-planning","category-pollution","category-safety","category-science","category-transparency","category-valdosta-city-council","category-water","tag-6943","tag-5-september-2013","tag-flooding","tag-ga-epd","tag-georgia","tag-glpc","tag-government","tag-greater-lowndes-planning-commission","tag-gretchen-quarterman","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-one-mile-branch","tag-planning","tag-pollution","tag-population","tag-regular-session","tag-safety","tag-sidewalk","tag-stream-buffer","tag-transparency","tag-two-mile-branch","tag-valdosta","tag-valdosta-city-council","tag-variance","tag-water","tag-withlacoochee-river","tag-withlacoochee-wastewater-treatment-plant","tag-wwtp","tag-zoning-on-september-7"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-1ss","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5608"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5615,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5608\/revisions\/5615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}