Imagine the New York subways with
300-400 million gallons of water after Hurricane Sandy. Well, the US Army Core of Engineers
"Unwatering" team are at New York and expect
to get all this water out in a matter of days pumping through about a mile
of subway at a time.
The Unwatering team gets its
rather unusual name from its function and purpose i.e. remove water from where
it is not supposed to be, like inside a subway tunnel. Apparently the more
traditional "dewatering" is about removing water from a place where
the water could be like a swimming pool that you might want to dewater before
winter. The Unwatering team of the US Army Core of Engineers developed the
unwatering expertise from the 2005 Katrina flooding in New Orleans.
There has been speculation in 2011 about events
like Hurricane Sandy becoming more common perhaps due to climate change. In any
case, many more cities in the world have to contend with subways that might get
flooded for one reason or another.
In 2010 -11 here are some
world cities that got flooded:
- Brisbane, Australia the third largest city in Australia
got flooded in January 2011 and became a ghost town. - Bangkok, Thailand had to evacuate jailed prisoners due to
flooding in October 2011. - Oklahoma City, USA had people on rooftops due to flash floods in
June 2010. - Dangdong, China and other parts of China had the worst floods in a decade in August 2010.
- Manila, Philippines saw typhoon and flooding
in September 2011.
Given that many city authorities
across the world struggle with the dewatering problem and go out of action for
weeks here may be an opportunity for the Unwatering team of the US
Army Core of Engineers to help flood relief personnel in other countries with
the expertise they have developed in this kind of work.While unwatering does not seem like an innovation in the global knowledge economy, the knowledge and expertise that the unwatering team is developing is extremely valuable to civic authorities across the world.
For most cities of the world would
take significantly more time than New York to clear water from subway tunnels. Contact StratoServe.