the world's great cities face threats

they have never before encountered

new york tokyo london

miami the threats come from the sea

from above and from below

these are the problems and their

solutions

for when the water comes

london has a population of 8 million

people and the initial system was

designed for 4 million people so it

actually doubles over the course of i

would say 125 years

if london stops functioning in london is

flooded this

country as far as you know it will stop

functioning

[Music]

while the thames is widely thought of as

london's river

it's actually part of a 215 mile long

series of tributaries and wetlands

throughout southeastern england the

thames flows east

from greater london into the north sea

50 miles away

poor people just had no chance 59 people

lost their lives

on camby island in that terrible

terrible evening

but 309 people along the whole east

coast of the uk

160 000 acres of land were inundated

across the uk

the damage was the equivalent of nearly

2 billion

today but it could have been even worse

for london

and the city decided to act that was

the foundation as to why london should

be protected

the flood was quite severe and they

realized that if we carry on

in this fashion in the future we

wouldn't be able to protect ourselves

from this

ongoing problem of a tidal surge leading

to the river banks

over topping and actually flooding the

floodplain all the way down to central

for three decades the barrier has kept

the city safe from storm surges

the thames barrier has been designed for

a one in a 1 000 year event

what that means is that there's a 0.1

chance of london being flooded

as a result of that barrier that is why

it works

but while it's been doing its job of

keeping london dry

the climate has been changing so now the

thames barrier faces a new challenge

the barrier was designed in the 60s

climate change global warming

weren't phrases in the dictionary then

the designers of the barrier had planned

for higher sea levels

not because of rising seas but because

southeast england is literally sinking

at a rate of 1.5 millimeters

or 16 of an inch per year

the designers and engineers who crafted

the barrier made their best estimation

and calculations to factor in

sea level rise in the future not

thinking of it in the context of climate

change or adaptation but recognizing

that the geological formation

underneath the south east in london is

sinking

their appreciation of geology more than

the appreciation of climate change is

what led them

to put in effect eight millimeter factor

of safety

every year into the design of the thames

barrier if you have a rising sea level

in addition to the land mass that is

sinking

that's the health producing combination

the current sewer system was constructed

in the late 19th century

it was designed principally to service 4

million people

and because of the way sewer systems are

built it's very difficult to retrofit

them and upgrade them over time

a fail safe is a backup mechanism for

when a system doesn't work

and in the case of london's flooding

sewers the fail-safe was overflow into

the thames

this unsanitary solution of the

victorian era still happens today

and it's a major health problem london

urgently needs to fix

so you have sea witch going directly

into the thames you have water quality

going down at the same time you have all

the water runoff

in order for it not to flood or to be

backed up in the system

actually going directly into the river

thames so that happens 50 times a year

one goal of the tideway tunnel is to

upgrade this antiquated system

and ensure raw sewage no longer gets

into the thames

by diverting the contaminated overflow

to upgraded treatment facilities

the tidal tunnel is london now getting

its act together

and trying to find a way to deal with

this old sewer system

it's a tunnel 25 kilometers long which

lies across the london basin of the

thames

its function is to allow for all the

water runoff that comes from the

drainage systems in addition to the

sewage to be

discharged into the sea

it's so expensive now to dig underground

in london

people are put off because of the of the

price tag

so in the future unfortunately we'll be

forced to use it whether we like it or

not whether we like the price tag

the tideway tunnel is projected to be

finished in 2023

meanwhile london has other mega projects

planned for the thames

the t 2100 is looking at improving

all the flood defenses along the thames

estuary to

improve both the riverbank the

embankment the flood walls

and the sea walls and the coastal

defenses that are in the estuary itself

to then allow the barrier to carry on

functioning until 2080 where

the idea is that they will want to build

a second thames barrier

[Music]

suds are good but they're a soft

solution the difficulty sometimes is

that if you have a flash flood um

incident and it rains and there's a

large amount of rain in a short period

of time

that in itself becomes an impervious

surface

suds aren't able to deal with that type

of water runoff whereas a sewer system

can specifically unlimited

infrastructure

and new ways of living to enable our

cities to grow

so right now the biggest challenge is to

let

planners policymakers the people who

make decisions understand

that we have to actually streamline

these systems

so they can function as one and i think

that alone is

a big challenge of what london needs to

do to move into the 21st century in its

fullness

so adaptation challenges our current way

of thinking it challenges

everything we think we do and say based

not only the name of sustainability by

the name of resilience

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