How Civil Engineering Could Be The Future Of Hurricane Flood Protection
The necessity of good civil engineer services becomes that much more apparent during hurricane season. Whether it’s a civil engineering company in Honduras or a civil engineering company in Florida, mechanical contributions and coastal engineering can be skillfully developed to create storm surge barriers.
Storm surge barriers are engineering challenges that civil engineer services would have to study immensely before putting in place. However, they may very well be the future of hurricane protection in the shadows of Category 5 storms Irma and Maria.
Would storm surge barriers work against the force of a hurricane?
With the right structural design, civil engineer services would be able to create storm surge barriers that would be capable of providing relief from flooding from lakes or oceans. In 2009, proposals had been made to create a storm surge barrier in New York City. The proposal had come from a civil engineering company known as Arcadis.
The storm surge barrier proposed had gates that could swing open and closed like a river dam. Yet up to 4,095 American dams have been determined “unsafe”, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. And unfortunately, the New York Harbor wasn’t flat or wide enough for Arcadis’ idea to be put into action.
Storm surge barriers are structurally designed to withstand the force of a severe weather storm in ways residential homes and buildings are not. What’s more is they are designed to protect cities and towns from flooding from rivers, lakes, and oceans where the hurricanes draw power. It’s possible that storm surge barriers would require the same sort of structure that makes up the sea walls in Japan.
How much time would it take to build a storm surge barrier?
Just as transportation planning can take months to years to develop because of geographical location and design, so it would take extensive time and research to develop and build a storm surge barrier. This is because when civil engineering services and companies design structures, they have to take into account the land and environment.
No geographical location and conditions are the same, nor is any ecosystem the same. One city’s storm surge barrier wouldn’t work as effectively in another location. Therefore, it would take a great deal of consideration and study of the land before a civil engineering firm would be capable of building one of these structures.
The future of storm surge barriers requires the study of how certain designs and modeling would affect the environment and climate conditions long-term. There will always be some kind of environmental issue when building a civil engineering structure. Therefore, it’s essential that the civil engineering service that’s chosen for the job is not only skilled and experienced, but is also detail-oriented and specific in their designs.