Flood Case Study

The Ellicott City flood was destructive because it was on a high gradient stream. The high gradient stream made it flood faster, and had low stream discharge. Discharge is cross section of stream channel. It was also capable of moving large particles, which is an example of deposition and erosion. In the experiment, the ‘Main Street Ellicott City’ stream was more affected than the Meandering Stream. The Main Street Ellicott City stream was flooded faster, and more houses and cars were destroyed compared to the Meandering

The levee system has disrupted the natural deposits that are left from the overflow of the river.2

The thirst for water has lead individuals and organizations to build dams across rivers at an alarming rate. During the early 1900s dams were being built so fast it was no longer big news when a dam was completed. These structures provided controlled irrigation water and hydroelectric power to the communities not only close to the reservoirs and dams, but also provided irrigation water and hydroelectric power to communities many miles away from the river. Negatively blocking the flow of the river has impacted fish ecosystems, increased evaporation of water, and flooded intricately important landscapes. These negative impacts, it can be argued, affect the humans living downstream or within the flood plain of the dam site. Dams

Floods are common natural disasters that occur all over the world. Flooding has devastating impacts on the lives of people who are affected by the disaster. Floods can ruin crops, demolish homes, take innocent lives and cause many other types of hardships. These disasters can also leave people with a financial burden and emotional effects. Studies have shown that floods have led to various sickness and health complications. This common disaster has recently taken place in the state of Louisiana. Louisiana has been suffering from an enormous flood and has left people without homes, without food, and without personal belongings.

Most of the catchments depicted in Figure 1 where fully urbanised which caused surfaces in the catchment to be impervious; that is very little runoff would infiltrate into the ground

Life on the river was pretty much the same for thousands of years, until 1889 when the first Aswan Dam was built in an attempt to control the yearly floods. It proved to be insufficient and was raised two more times until it was decided to build another dam upstream in 1946. Once these dams were functional they provided many benefits to the rapidly growing population, including easier access to drinking water, irrigation for agriculture, electricity for modern life and fishing (Burke and Eaton) . Certainly the benefits to Egyptians were numerable and undeniable. The does not mean there were no negative impacts.The yearly floods no longer came and all that good, nutrient-rich silt that used to wash down the Nile and onto the flood plans was now blocked by the dams. “Before the Aswan High Dam, the Nile River carried about 124 million tons of sediment to the sea each year, depositing nearly 10 million tons on the floodplain and delta. Today, 98% of that sediment remains behind the dam. The result has been a drop in soil productivity and depth, among other serious changes to Egypt’s floodplain agriculture. The Aswan Dam has also led

This project proposes that the stream banks be corrected from their current state of severe soil erosion. Some of the walls of soil surrounding the stream can reach approximately 1.8 meters in depth. Where the runoff drain meets the stream can even reach up to approximately 2.6 meters. The walls of the stream bank are a vault of in situ soils slowly restoring themselves to low sloping conditions through more erosion. This is an indicator that there has been extreme down cutting as result of stream channelization.

The fragility of river biome ecosystems are increasing more and more with each passing year. Development of man-made, hydraulic obstructions and pollution are two of the biggest factors putting the Missouri River at risk. Less than 70% of the planet’s longest 177 rivers are without man-made structures, such as dams. The number will only continue to increase as global populations grow and untapped rivers are targeted. Structures built on rivers negatively affect plants, animals, and especially humans, as the majority of water used by people comes from rivers. The effects of interfering with the natural flow of rivers can already be seen in the straining of the Colorado, Indus, and Yellow rivers, as they have begun to dry before reaching the sea. It is only time before the Mississippi River, which is a continuation of the Missouri River, is affected as such. The aforementioned demonstrates the expanding environmental harms rivers are facing. Backing this up, scientists have shown that disrupting a river’s natural flow patterns incredibly affects its wellbeing. For

A flood can be defined in many depths but is simply water where it isn’t wanted. In late 2010 Queensland was affected by major flash flooding this continued on into the beginning of 2011 and ¾ of Queensland was declared a disaster zone.

As described above, the flash flood was caused by intense rainfall over several days during June 2012. The torrential rains led to record-breaking discharges in the Knife and St. Louis Rivers. The discharges from the Knife River and St. Louis River peaked at 25,000 ft3/s and 45,300 ft3/s respectively (Czuba et al., 2012). The Mississippi River and other nearby streams and rivers also experienced unusually high flow volumes. As rain rushed into and through these systems, flood mitigation and

The purpose of this report is to geologically evaluate the potential hazards for flooding in Hazard City. This report will include a detailed historic and extrapolated Stream Gauge Data Worksheet, as well as a graph of the Discharge Frequency Curve expected on Clearwater River. The report will provide Hazard city with my scientific analysis, conclusions, and provide recommendations concerning potential flood damages.

A disaster is natural or man-made. Disaster such, as flood has been catastrophic across the United Sates, as they are occurring at unusual time. Therefore, local, states and federal government should begin preparing, planning and create a policy for such times as these, because it is becoming more and more normal for cities to flood. According to Flood Facts, in terms of lives lost and property damaged, floods are just behind tornadoes as the top natural disaster. In the United States, flood damages totaled $8.41 billion in 2011. There were 113 flood-related deaths. Floods can affect any area to some degree; wherever rain falls, flooding can occur.

As the Marxist approach puts it, “underlying states of human marginalisation are conceived as the principle cause of disaster.” (Pelling, 2001, p. 179). This resource exclusion to particular categories of people within society creates their vulnerability to risk, and in turn disaster. McLaughlin and Dietz (2007) suggest there are three dimensions that make up vulnerability including exposure, sensitivity and resilience. An example displaying the vulnerability of lower classed social categories is in North Bihar, India, where floods have been managed through engineering works to create embankments. While the Government appears to be reducing the hazard, this has increased the vulnerability of the local people. Soil fertility has decreased reducing agricultural success, dangerous flash floods are occurring due to embankment walls collapsing and communities have settled on apparently safe embankments and are now highly exposed (Pelling, 2001). The natural flood hazard was dangerous, but these works by society have created a natural disaster (Pelling, 2001). Power inequalities have created this disastrous situation where lower classes are at high exposure to floods due to profit hungry management bodies. This technological approach is clearly failing but the Government and other managing groups make large profits off flood engineering works and have the power to decide how to control the issue (Pelling, 2001). This has resulted in creating

The relevance is given as we need an adequate material to build the dam as well as enough water to achieve a water level and finally to maintain that level. It also should be thought about a solution for the silt coming down the river in order to keep on getting a clear flush.

Bangladesh is one of the largest deltas in the world which is highly Penetrable to Natural Disasters because of its Geographical location, Flat and low-lying landscape, Poverty, Population density, Illiteracy, Lack of Institutional setup etc. Similarly the Physical, Social as well as Economic states of Bangladesh are very typical to any of the most Penetrable countries to Natural Disasters in the world . The total land area is 147,570 sq. km. consists mostly of Floodplains (almost 80%) leaving major part of the country (with the exception of the north-western highlands) prone to flooding in the rainy season. Moreover, the adverse affects of Climate Change – especially High Temperature, Cyclones and Sea-level Rise, Storm Surges, Salinity Intrusion, Heavy Monsoon Downpours etc. has aggravated the overall Economic Development scenario of the country to a great extent.