Video game to help in Flood Control
This is interesting... As reported by the
BBC:
bq. The planning of the UK's flood defences is to get a helping hand from a 3D virtual world-based computer game.
bq. FloodRanger, set in a fictional region over a 100-year period, helps planners and engineers work out strategies to cope with real-life flooding.
bq. As in other virtual world games, like SimCity, players have God-like control, so social, economic and environmental decisions have knock-on effects.
bq. It was developed as part of the DTI's Foresight flood defence project.
And the reason:
bq. According to the government's chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, the number of people at high risk of flooding in Britain was expected to more than double to nearly 3.5 million by 2080.
Very cool idea - the article goes on to say that great pains are being taken to make sure the hydrological model is an accurate one. I would imagine that there are so many factors involved that flood control is a very complex task. England has a lot of canals with locks and dams and each section of water has its own time-constant.
With the growth in population, people will be building on flood plains and with the increase of farming and logging, more rain runoff will become available.
I Googled the software (
FloodRanger) and it turns out it's available commercially for 49 GBP which is about $96 USD. Ouch. Guess I will not be trying it after all...
Posted by DaveH at February 19, 2004 11:29 AM