Flood wall

A floodwall at Zruč nad Sázavou, Czech Republic

Flood wall and a sliding gate in New Orleans French Market (1986)

A flood wall (or floodwall) is a primarily vertical artificial barrier designed to temporarily contain the waters of a river or other waterway which may rise to unusual levels during seasonal or extreme weather events. Flood walls are mainly used on locations where space is scarce, such as cities or where building levees or dikes (dykes) would interfere with other interests, such as existing buildings, historical architecture or commercial use of embankments.

Flood walls are nowadays mainly constructed from pre-fabricated concrete elements. Flood walls often have floodgates which are large openings to provide passage except during periods of flooding, when they are closed. As a flood walls mostly consist of relatively short elements compared to dikes, the connections between the elements are critical to prevent the failure of the flood wall.

The substantial costs of flood walls can be justified by the value of commercial property thus protected from damage caused by flooding.

Flood walls are almost always built in cities, notably:

External links[]

DeltaWorks.Org Flood Barriers project in the Netherlands

v t Coastal management
Management	Accretion Coastal engineering Coastal management Integrated coastal zone management Managed retreat Submersion
Hard engineering	A-Jacks Accropode Akmon Artificial reef Breachway Breakwater Cliff stabilization Dolos Flood wall Floodgate Gabion Groyne Jetty Levee Hard engineering Honeycomb sea wall Hudson's equation KOLOS Mole Pier Revetment Riprap Seawall Tetrapod Training wall Wharf Xbloc
Soft engineering	Beach nourishment Beach drainage Dynamic revetment Living shorelines Sand dune stabilization Soft engineering
Related topics	Beach evolution Coastal erosion Geotechnical engineering Land reclamation Longshore transport Modern recession of beaches Stream restoration

Flood wall

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