Last year’s UN Climate Change Conference was held in Paris, at which 195 nations signed an agreement with the aim of shaping a low-carbon, resilient and sustainable future, and holding the increase in the world’s average temperature to less than 2°C by the end of this century.
However, in less than half a year after the conference, Paris, a city rarely hit by floods, suffered its most severe floods in 100 years on June 3.
The water level on the River Seine was 6.5m higher than its normal level. Several prominent museums were closed as France declared a state of emergency.The Louvre and Orsay museums activated emergency plans to evacuate invaluable paintings and artworks.
French Minister of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy Segolene Royal said that 50 percent of French municipalities are vulnerable to flooding; 17 million people, about one-quarter of France’s population, live in areas at risk from flooding.
While Paris was suffering from flooding and had its world-renowned museums closed and artworks evacuated, Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport — which has annual passenger traffic of 35 million — was also hit by a historic high-severity flood outside of the typhoon season, as a result of torrential rain.
If, in the face of climate change, the nation still lacks comprehensive plans for flood prevention, preparedness and mitigation in terms of urban planning, transportation, water facilities, museums, public buildings and schools, severe floods are set to become regular occurrences.
There are a myriad of resilience planning and practices around the globe for the purpose of flood prevention.
In the UK, both engineering and non-engineering methods are used. The Thames Barrier — the world’s largest movable flood prevention facility spanning more than 500m — was designed to prevent flooding in London.
A sustainable drainage system has also been implemented to enhance water-holding capacity, permeation and water storage, as well as the reconstruction of roads, roofs, metropolitan parks, ecological ponds and detention basins.
To prevent flooding in Tokyo, authorities built the Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel, which channels water from the city’s rivers to giant underground silos during heavy rain, thereby mitigating surface floods.
The Netherlands also replaced traditional water blocking methods with designs that can enable both water storage and flood mitigation.
As Taiwan and France both suffered from floods in the same week, it is evident that disaster mitigation and flood prevention are of great importance.
If Taiwan has land sustainability and urban resilience as its goals for the future, it must begin to improve its ability to accumulate risk data in metropolitan areas, understand the data and assess it, while enhancing risk management and the ability to respond and effectively communicate on bottom-up risk management.
More importantly, Taiwan should invest in disaster mitigation. As the old saying goes: “An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.”
Su Yu-shou holds a doctorate in city and regional planning from the University of Pennsylvania.
Translated by Ethan Zhan
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