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Concept
Flood control
Summary
Flood control (or flood mitigation or flood protection or flood alleviation) methods are used to reduce or prevent the detrimental effects of flood waters. Flood relief methods are used to reduce the effects of flood waters or high water levels. Flooding can be caused by a mix of both natural processes, such as extreme weather upstream, and human changes to waterbodies and runoff. A distinction is made between structural and non-structural flood control measures. Structural methods physically restrain the flood waters, whereas non-structural methods do not. Building hard infrastructure to prevent flooding, such as flood walls, is effective at managing flooding. However, increased best practice within landscape engineering is to rely more on soft infrastructure and natural systems, such as marshes and flood plains, for handling the increase in water. To prevent or manage coastal flooding, coastal management practices have to handle natural processes like tides but also the human cased sea level rise.
Flood control and relief is a particularly important part of climate change adaptation and climate resilience, both sea level rise and changes in the weather (climate change causes more intense and quicker rainfall), means that flooding of human infrastructure is particularly important the world over.
In environmental engineering, flood control involves the management of flood water movement, such as redirecting flood run-off through the use of floodwalls and flood gates, rather than trying to prevent floods altogether. It also involves the management of people, through measures such as evacuation and dry/wet proofing properties. The prevention and mitigation of flooding can be studied on three levels: on individual properties, small communities, and whole towns or cities.
There are a number of similar terms that are all used interchangeably: Flood control, flood mitigation, flood protection and flood alleviation are all terms that mean "the detention and/or diversion of water during flood events for the purpose of reducing discharge or downstream inundation".
Official source
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