Floods in Thailand Ruin Ancient City

Flooding at a World Heritage Site in Thailand

Floods in Thailand continue after starting back in mid-July. The floods have already took the lives of 224 people with the number growing by the day. The ancient city of Ayutthaya is about 400 years old and considered a World Heritage Site. This is just one of 500 temples that are being affected by the on going flooding in this region. If you look at this in the paradigm aspect of engineering you can take into account that these structures although built fairly strong to have survived over 400 years. This is a prime example of an in-tangible loss because they have historical meaning and can no longer be rebuilt with the same thought in mind.  The temples may be strong but the surrounding homes that seem to be made of shanty material are some of the most susceptible buildings to flooding. Not only do they allow water to consume the house they are not built to withstand this onslaught of water. The behavioral paradigm would go about this flooding event in saying that people shouldn't build on a low lying landscape. However, this area is very poor so most of the citizens in the town are forced to live in the more susceptible areas. The development approach gets into what can be done following an event such as this in order to enhance mitigation efforts. In a case such as flooding along the Chao Phraya, once the flood waters reside they may want to look into building higher embankments to prevent future floods of this magnitude. They may also want to look into the clean up of this area afterwards. Since the water is very stagnant it has the potential to foster disease. During or even directly afterwards setting up a hospital or shelter that gives medical attention would quickly decrease the amount of casualties afterwards. Summing this all up in the complexity approach you can quickly see why area's like this tend to take flooding in a more damaging way. If your in an impoverished area you don't have the funding to create higher embankments or flood gates. You also don't have sufficient jobs that would allow the citizens to build better homes or homes in other places. Without proper buildings or location of certain buildings (i.e. hospitals) the area is going to be at a much higher risk for casualties not only during the incident but following the disaster as well.


Information found at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44772469/ns/weather/