Dutch flood infrastructure protects Rotterdam against 10,000-year storms
Dr. Bill Merrill · The Ike Dike: the biggest civil engineering project in US history · Nov 9, 2022 · at 23:15
Dr. Bill Merrill compares U.S. storm defense standards with the Dutch flood protection system around Rotterdam and rural areas.
0:00 / 0:10exact quote · 10.6s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“The upper part around Rotterdam's protected a 10,000 year storm. The lower area, the more agricultural area, is protected to a 3000 year storm.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Dr. Bill Merrill
Army Corps natural dunes will fail against storms stronger than Ike
“The Army Corps' natural dunes would only protect you for to about an Ike-like storm. Nothing stronger. So they would be wiped out. And then if another storm comes, and we've had up to three storms in a season come near us, so, you know, we could be hit again a…”
Targeting 100-year storm protection is sufficient to avert total coastal catastrophe
“If we get a hundred years, We can prevent a catastrophe. We may not be able to prevent a disaster, but we can prevent the really nasty situations where people are isolated for weeks and just terrible things happen. So, we can prevent that with a lower level of…”
Mega flood gates require massive scale rather than complex engineering
“It's big engineering. It's not particularly hard engineering, but it is big engineering”
Merrill predicts US will not fund 1,000-year storm protection in his lifetime
“Not in my lifetime, would be my guess. I just think it's gonna, that would cost too much money. But I think what you're gonna see is as sea level rises, The threats become worse and worse. We're going to have enough trouble just keeping that a hundred year pro…”
Engineered coastal protections will become standard as rapid intensification prevents evacuation
“I think you're going to see more and more of these types of projects come in as sea level continues to arise and hurricanes become harder to deal with. They seem to, they're definitely intensifying faster, so it's harder to evacuate. That only leaves protectio…”
Ike Dike will span over 60 miles of dunes and sea gates
“Gonna be a sixty-plus mile, mile-long structure. A lot of the, a lot of it'll look totally natural. We'll either have fortified dunes, or the Corps proposed to put natural dunes in. But then the gates will be the thing that will really stand out.”