Innovative Danish dam uses water to fight flooding

Picture form the 2011 floods in Thailand. Sandbag barriers were build to limit the damages and control the floods. Photo: U.S. Marine Corps by Cpl. Robert J. Maurer @ WikiCommons
Picture form the 2011 floods in Thailand. Sandbag barriers were build to limit the damages and control the floods. Photo: U.S. Marine Corps by Cpl. Robert J. Maurer @ WikiCommons

When TV-news reports on flooding, the speaker is often accompanied by pictures of armies of people building dams of sandbags to save their homes. This might become images of the past. A Danish company has invented a new type of dam that can potentially save flood plagued countries from the trouble connected with building ineffective and expensive sandbag dams.

The concept is relatively simple. A long tube is rolled out and with the help from a few generators pumped full of the water that is to be kept out.  The tube then creates a solid barrier. The mobile dam system is called NoFloods and is created by Danish company Environment Solutions.

The NoFloods dam is very light and can be handled faster and a lot easier than a dam of sandbags. Environment Solutions compares the two approaches on their website, while 1 kilometer dam of sandbags takes 6940 man hours to build and consists of 150.000 sandbags, 1 kilometer of NoFloods dam can be assembled by four men in a few hours and the necessary equipment can be fitted inside a single truck.

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