What stops rain from flooding your city?

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Rain has been a constant source of flooding in cities for centuries. We’ve gotten better at engineering defenses as people die and we needed to make things better.
Practical Engineering on how sewers work: • How Sewers Work (feat....
JAPAN SITES
Underground Water Tank Tour: gaikaku.jp/
Tetsugakudo Apartment: goo.gl/maps/orcjbFAHaLwVUdw36
Nissan Stadium: goo.gl/maps/jacAmnQQifjcJQAj9
Infrastructure Tourism: www.mlit.go.jp/sogoseisaku/re...
For any geeks like me, this is the document I used that covers the fun technical details of the sites I visited and more: documents.worldbank.org/en/pu...
TORONTO Sites
Moore Dry Pond: goo.gl/maps/MuZS2PaqSGfFaHUn6
Clairville Dam: goo.gl/maps/87gSqgP2h5qe9Zd48
Raymore Park: goo.gl/maps/Zrak6S78ZdNTWzqW6
- - - -
Table of Contents
0:00 From Highways to Hidden Dams
1:40 How Speed Fixed Sewers in Victorian London
3:49 Making Sewers Even FASTER!
5:30 #Ad So I Can Make These Videos
6:55 How Concrete Channels Move TONS of Water When it Rains
7:36 Speed Kills. The Hurricane Toronto Underestimated
9:20 How Dams save lives
10:46 Hidden Dams that Surround You
14:42 Tokyo - Apartments & Stadiums Designed to Flood
18:04 $2 Billion Underground Storage
19:13 Cheaper & Greener Flood Defenses Soon Coming to Your City
- - - -
Some videos have a creative commons license:
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creativecommons.org/licenses/...

[@Lam]

Sign up to Brilliant using my link and get 20% off your annual subscription: brilliant.org/AndrewLam

[@zaj007]

Hey. Put the yellow outlines in the thumbnail. The video is great! Just the thumbnail sucks. Make it clearer what the video is about

[@JMLoope]

​@@zaj007 😅 7:59 😅

[@TommyCheese-cd2fd]

Do you think our country is about to go to war with China because of the Chinese government our is it our own government? God knows no one with any sense wants anyone to suffer

[@r.ccustomtruckingsydneyaus4632]

so why didn't they cover this or better yet drill a tunnel under the city for the water to run. look at all the space saved can be used for actually something good capping could put hole h.way overtop of that river. . silly not too

[@AMPProf]

IF ALL THE SEAS WERE INK

[@mmp0625]

I’m a civil engineer specialized in water resources and you did a fantastic job making such critical (yet mundane) infrastructure very interesting. Also great to see the actual manning’s equation when discussing open channel flow. Great work! I will definitely be subscribing.

[@Lam]

Wow, thank you so much!

[@BestMods168]

🤡

[@zenlei8258]

@@Lam It is better to build a few man made lakes to store heavy rain fall. Then release the water gradually after the rains become less.

[@PureMagma]

​@@zenlei8258in an ideal world this would be true, but in heavily populated areas where "minimal planning" occurred & prevailed for over 100 years... lakes don't adequately protect the water reserves. More specifically, man-made lakes do not protect the costs that have been expended to capture and direct storm waters. Like this video explains "money and space" are the most important concerns for successful water retention in densely populated areas.

[@zenlei8258]

@@PureMagma Some China lakes is doing this job. The man made lakes have very less water by pumping water out during dry season. During heavy rain fall the lakes will store this excess water temporarily. So less water flow into to residents area and flood can be avoided. It work all the time with proper planning.

[@eli1000fer]

17:27 *engineering an entire building to waterproof the first floor with watertight doors and reinforced windows* Andrew Lam: "small details"

[@Lam]

For this video haha

[@ethanma1722]

The production value on this is incredible. You strike a rare balance of both teaching me new things and also making a palatable video that I can watch while eating lunch. Keep it up bro

[@Lam]

Really appreciate your comment! Getting the balance right for the story was really hard. Glad it paid off and made it a fun watch for you!

[@cbsGD]

🙏

[@liquidmakor6793]

im literally eating lunch while watching this. And replying this comment

[@nickkk420]

It's true, very well struck balance

[@lucasfontainha9053]

you stole my words!!

[@erictaylor5462]

10:40 In the Early 1980's there was a huge flood in my home town. A few years later I became friends with another kid who had been crossing a flooded street. He turned his head for a second and when he looked back his friend was gone. The water was a bit less than knee deep but it was muddy so the road was not visible under the water. He thought his friend had just tripped and expected him to pop up in a second, when that didn't help he started to get worried and started walking around where his friend had been when he nearly fell into an open manhole. He called for help but this storm drain flowed directly into the bay and there was very little hope. They never did find a body. He said it was weird how you can be talking to someone one minute and the next they are just gone. There was no splash no cry of alarm, his friend was just gone. After this the city started welding the man hole covers on. Not so strongly they could not be opened, but enough that the water could not blow them open in a flood.

[@riba2233]

Oh boy I thought this channel was dead, glad to see you back!

[@Lam]

I'm alive, it just took a stupid amount of time to produce this video! Thanks for coming back and watching!

[@riba2233]

@@Lam yeah I can imagine, thanks :)

[@gradientO]

Takes time to produce such high quality videos. I'll wait

[@Dgunztube]

@@Lamplease keep it up.

[@LongIslandCityLayout]

Nah he’s definitely alive. His videos are super high-quality and he probably has a full time job outside of KZbin.

[@teamcybr8375]

I really hope all of those "I would need a full video to explain" bits turn into their own videos! I'm definitely interested to learn more about these projects!!

[@Lam]

Oh they're very much a possibility. The sewer one especially as I have a lot the research down but it seems like a big video.

[@ChesterSam89]

Easily the best video on stormwater infrastructure I’ve ever seen. You really made a boring topic EXTREMELY interesting. Shoutout to all civil engineers that do amazing work that nobody takes the time to appreciate.

[@Lam]

Wow, thank you so much. I tried my best to help transform the way they see the world around them. Hopefully they can now see what's been done

[@mfaizsyahmi]

Underrated af. This video shows the shift in the philosophy of stormwater management, from making the problem go away as fast as possible (conveyance), to holding them in place for as long as possible and not let it be a bigger problem down the line (retention). Interesting thing about Tokyo and storm management is that it goes back to the Tokugawa Shogunate period. Edo is very flat and prone to flooding and as such the shoguns started flood mitigation efforts even during the Closed Doors period. They rerouted the most of the flow of the upstream rivers into Tone River, and in part making it the longest river in Japan. Then in the Imperial era giant bypass channels with giant floodplains were constructed, which uprooted quite a bit of homes. Not to mention dams.

[@Lam]

Wow, thanks for the kind words and the added comment about the history. I didn't know that and I might cover tokyo and flooding in the future.

[@praveenb9048]

Tom Scott, but with more substantial information.

[@delcogoblin]

I knew you were going to talk about Philadelphia at some point. The city and its largest neighboring county, Delco, are both BELOW sea level and adjacent to the Delaware River. We've had heavy flooding in the past but it has improved significantly over the years. During hurricane Sandy the only thing preventing my house from being swept away was the genius engineering of the river right behind my property. I remember right after the storm sitting at the edge watching the water speed past what must have been over 30 miles an hour. In Ridley Park there is a gigantic recreational field called the "Hollow" that sits in a massive valley, with a small river at its bottom. Back in the 90s, according to my parents, the entire park used to be a lake. Now it's part of the genius engineering that keeps the area dry.

[@Lam]

Wow, thank you for sharing that anecdote with me! I'm going to look up that right now

[@delcogoblin]

@@Lam sure thing! Just a quick correction on my part, the valley is located in "Prospect Park, PA" and officially is called "Moore's lake park". Right next to Ridley so I got it a bit mixed up.

[@filanfyretracker]

Philly had the vine street expressway fill up in 2021 I think it was. While that was due to lack of working pumps I do wonder if it partially saved the neighborhood from filled up basements. Philly also has that river nobody can spell without using Google, which is funny because its pronounced like Google. Fortunately all my area in SNJ got during Ida was an EF-3 tornado.

[@RazzaDazza0]

Truly amazing the amount of time you dedicated to this is incredible. I also loved your detailed animations and even quick but still visible mathematical explanations. You also gave me some really cool japan visit ideas once I eventually can do that. I might suggest in the future though that maybe you try to collaborate with other creators to save you time on your hard work. I could see that you looked at practical engineering's video but maybe it might be a good idea for you to reach out for experts to explain topics to you instead of trying to understand it by reading (and losing those 8 hours for the math part/animation and everything). That hard work definitely paid off in the quality of this video just an idea to try to save you time but it's not necessary if you can't or prefer not to make your videos that way.

[@Lam]

Hey Shockwire, really appreciate the kind words and the advice! Without a doubt growing my team in the future is important. The research process is far too laborious and a lot of it is me getting in my own way. I do know how to better streamline it and asking for helping will be something I do more of in the future. Part of me though and what drives this channel is that I love figuring stuff out on my own. Hope you get to go to Japan!

[@RazzaDazza0]

@@Lam Thanks for the reply I hope you are able to build that team because considering you did this with a smaller team and the quality is already so amazing I'm sure once you are able to save yourself more time your content will just get even better.

[@RichTCS]

Shout out to the Manning Formula! As a young civil engineer 35 years ago, I was given a circular slide rule that was based on the Manning equation and it was so intuitive to properly size storm pipes - and is just as handy today even with the proliferation of computer software.

[@bobloblaw10001]

Mannings formula is not sufficient in most cases. To do things right you also need to consider inlet and outlet control. I have found that most general civil engineers forget this in practice.

[@givepassword]

Great video! It’s disappointing to see the video doing so poorly, KZbin needs more content creators like you! You’re one of only a handful of creators I have notifications on for.

[@Lam]

Thanks for being a big fan of the channel! I appreciate the support! Sometimes takes a few days for the video to pick up

[@Blex_040]

It might get a second spring because it's linked first thing in Tom Scott's newsletter this week :D

[@Blex_040]

I'm here from Tom Scott's newsletter, and I'm so so glad he linked this because this is the awesome content I'm always looking for :D It kinda reminds me of The B1M!

[@Lam]

Awesome! Thank you!

[@aarong5996]

I love your videos, they're all so technical and interesting. Well researched and enjoyable, keep it up!.

[@_Davy_]

These videos are great and all, but what's the best budget dashcam for 2023? All joking aside, these videos are extremely interesting. Can't wait for the next one in a year.

[@Lam]

I haven't looked at dashcams in a while

[@midgetman4206]

I love the both of them. Everyone loves the added greenery, and it's inarguably needed in such barren wastelands that is of modern infrastructure. I would have liked to have seen the rivers get more beautification as well, that way they aren't just concrete. The massive feats of architecture and engineering are not also a method to secure reliable function during the most dangerous of storms, they are also incredibly impressive and undeniably cool.

[@jiecut]

Amazing, this video was crammed with information density. So many different examples and diagram. Really using the visual medium. Had to slow it down to 1x speed.

[@Lam]

Thanks for appreciating! It's my philosophy, if it's not visual you might as well write an article.

[@jdub7775]

I live in Philadelphia and had no idea we had this infrastructure for rain! This is absolutely amazing! I appreciate Philly a whole lot better! Thank you for the video!

[@Xel_Naga]

8:10 its actually called a "fluvial point bar" water slows depositing sediment creating the point not a peninsula :D and the direct other side of the point bar is the "thalweg" where the water is moving fastest eroding the river back. Excellent summary of Flood mitigation

[@Lam]

Excellent, that is good to know! Sometimes I can only dive so deep on a topic so it's nice knowing the proper name

[@YangLeee]

I love your videos. Complete switch from old content, but still amazing. Thank you.

[@JTCF]

Oh wow, it was so cool to randomly find the inspiration for the Storm Drain location from Mirror's Edge!

[@JoshF710]

This was great. Well worth the wait. Look forward to the next one.

[@GarryChoo]

Another great video! Very informative as usual! Thanks for producing this! I've never been to Tokyo but I want to go now for this reason!

[@MrTrevortxeartxe]

This is such a great video! I knew that a lot of engineering goes into urban design to mitigate flooding, but I had _no idea_ the extent to which it was implemented, especially in the world's biggest cities! Thank you for explaining so thoroughly. Looking forward to more content!

[@fresusjeak]

Great video; the editing, and I appreciate the location shots very much.

[@collinstv3125]

This is an eye-opening look into the effects of better planning. This makes me appreciate what other cities hae done to make the lives of their citizens better. Right now it's raining like hell in Nairobi, Kenya and there is no planning for our city. Infrastructure has been destroyed, lives lost, disaster management is in shambles and nobody gives a duck.

[@briantownsend9414]

I'm kind of surprised that the Red River Floodway wasn't mentioned. When it was built, it was the 2nd largest earth moving project of modern times. Only the Panama Canal was bigger!

[@g-rated3514]

What an informative and indepth look into this topic. Would like to see more on this, maybe with a collab from one of the folks you mentioned

[@yemreikiz]

Great work Andrew! Much appreciated.

[@richdobbs6595]

Thanks. In a development that is happening in my town, they were putting in those brightly covered archs, and then covering them up. I couldn't find anything that described their purposes. But now it is clear that they were one of the underground infiltration systems that you showed.

[@dariadavay]

wow the production quality on this is incredible! very inspiring 🙌

[@FirstLast-kz9ub]

Awesome video, happy to wait for as long as is needed with anticipation for the next one!

[@Lam]

Thanks! Hopefully next one will be faster!

[@georgenorris2657]

Really fascinating. I hope all city planners watch your video.

[@Metroshica]

This video is absolutely amazing. I really hope the algorithm picks this up. You obviously put a lot of effort into this and it really deserves a larger audience.

[@Lam]

I hope it does too!

[@brentccochran123]

Brilliant job Andrew! You must have spent endless time making this video. It’s a benchmark!! Please keep making more videos!

[@ruangoto]

KZbin brought you back to my home and wow your videos are always excellent!

[@S1lva139]

i can not express how much i love these types of videos and how fasinating they are. keep up the good work man looking forward to the next.

[@Lam]

Thanks, will do!

[@wherearemytesticles]

Thank you for the insane amount of work you put into this!

[@Lam]

Thanks for recognizing it! It was a struggle getting this to the finish line

[@Design_Nerd]

Hey, you're back! Thank you for making this world a little better. The fact that you explain such important things in such detail and such simple terms sets you apart from other channels and makes you unique. I still can't forget your video about road barriers, I think it's stuck in my head forever (as well as your other videos). Thanks again! Keep going!

[@Lam]

Really appreciate it! The magic is making things simple

[@mrsamvideo]

Great video and amazing production quality as usual! You definitely can see the amount of research and time you put into these videos! Keep em coming please!

[@Lam]

Thanks Sam! Really appreciate it!

[@aritin5259]

Great video as always! I’m from the Philippines, so sadly floods still cause many casualties here, which sucks considering we can experience 20+ typhoons yearly. I hope this type of technology would reach us!

[@icanflyfaraway]

i'm from the Philippines too, It is upsetting that every homeowners and landowners wants to pour concrete on everything.

[@CaptainFalcon92]

As always, great engineering topic and a huge work put into it. Underated channel, hope you grow fast

[@8.bit_gun340]

18:24 that mirrors edge nostalgia never hit so hard.

[@TheSaltyAdmiral]

1:04 Woah, that painting with the rain effects over it looked amazing!

[@us3rG]

The ship door is brilliant even for normal houses in stormy area. When it floods you close the first floor and take the kayak out the second floor

[@skrmshplys9218]

this is very informative video. thank you for making this one

[@speedracer739]

Really enjoy the topics you choose to do videos on! Really unique and very interesting :)

[@robertrigby-jones2805]

Fantastic video! Audio great, editing great, knowledge at the top of the game! great content can't wait to see more!

[@rikmorel4870]

Amazing video. You kept it entertaining while providing a lot of useful and interesting information. Well done!

[@LivingInBoredom]

I’m from Houston and we have all sorts of basins for managing rainwater all over the place. As soon as I saw that soccer field, I knew that it was only a field when it wasn’t rainy :P I had no idea about the stormwater management in other places! It makes so much sense that people elsewhere would use the same techniques-after all, if it works it works-but I’d never considered it before. The water infrastructure down here is so prevalent, but I’ve struggled to find maps and data about how each piece specifically works, especially the inaccessible, invisible underground parts. And of course, finding the data still leaves interpreting and understanding the data ^^;; I’m glad you’ve put together this video!

[@blabbergasted4380]

Fascinating. Thanks for sharing.

[@punxsutawneyphilofficial]

I lived in Philly for 3 years and never even knew about the sponges! That's so cool

[@MoreCowFluid]

I love a good Swale. Floodplain protection in Melbourne use a lot of them and they add so much green space!

[@shirishthakare9842]

Love you buddy. These r called holding ponds. Much needed in cities. It gives confidence too. city has water reserve within city to use in shortage.

[@davidvomlehn4495]

Loved this, especially that it covered so many approaches.

[@muhamadbudiebasri2498]

Great video Andrew, I love it, Very thoughtful video. Keep it up man

[@benashcroft4104]

One of my favorite parts of living in Arizona is that it's such a dry place, but we care so intensely about water and have such random massive rainstorms that we have retention areas EVERYWHERE, flooding and water damage in the valley is basically not a worry despite the seeming problems of such rare storms

[@Akieta]

Yooo, I can't watch this right now but I am stoked to see it! I'll be sure to watch this tomorrow

[@austinhernandez2716]

I love fishing those ditches and channels for some reason, it's my favorite

[@raykusengsky2205]

Great video quality well done 👏

[@simon.griesius]

Fantastic video. Well presented, interesting topic.

[@B_B_]

ohoho, i absolutely adore learning about infrastructure stuff! this was very informative! it really does give me even more appreciation for city development

[@fightwithdogma]

Don't know how I got the chance to get this recommended but this is a very good video which I'm used to see on way bigger channels. Keep it up, that was amazingly informative and passionate.

[@SixthQuarter]

Fantastic video. Really interesting and very well presented. New subscriber right here 👊🏼

[@Tuberuser187]

Its always great to find a new infrastructure and civil engineering "channel" (badum tish), instant sub.

[@ptx172]

Damn...this is a very high quality video I ever watch. We need to support this channel. I am speechless .... I just bow my head to you. From history to design to animation to story telling it takes this a lot of time to make a high quality video.

[@chrisyabut88]

I hope the Philippines can learn something from this. We've been dealing with storms and floods for decades.

[@cynderrs_]

For the level of editing and quality of video production I'm surprised its only garnered a few thousand views so far. Great stuff never the less

[@Lam]

I'll pick up, it takes a bit of time. Glad you liked it!

[@billm6774]

Thank you one of my favorite topics. Well done.

[@BrickfordCityFire]

ALways happy to see a new Andrew Lam video in my feed. Always interesting, and the production quality is awesome!

[@Lam]

Thanks! Glad you liked it!

[@AtlanticPicture]

This is Awesome! Excellent work Andrew! 😎👍

[@SidarthDasari]

Great visuals throughout this video. Happy to dee you pist again!

[@SeanAubin]

This is the best KZbin video I've seen in the last 6 months! So informative and insightful! The narrative and its presentation really helped my understanding compared to trawling Wikipedia.

[@surviver5738]

Amazing work man, thank you!

[@SteveWhisenhant]

One of the most compelling engineering explainer vids I've seen in a long time. Please keep it up!

[@bobloblaw10001]

Compelling but amateurish

[@lllleeeeiiii]

This is a rare occasion where i decided to subscribe after just 1 video. Hope this video gets more impression and feel like a start to something special

[@Lam]

Thanks! That means a lot!

[@Stroporez]

Seriously, this is one of the best videos I saw on KZbin. Maybe I'm biased because I live in Toronto. This is an amazing work nevertheless.

[@FordPrefect6x7]

Another awesome video Andrew! Thanks!

[@Lam]

Wow, thank you, really appreciated! I'll try to keep making content you like in the future!

[@204Fozzy]

You should talk about the Red River Flood Way in Winnipeg. Lots of history in that.

[@martythestines]

Across the street from my parents house, is a retention pond. Back in the 90's when I was a kid, every once in a while I would see it actually fill up. Granted, we lived at the top of the hill. But now I know exactly what it was for. Thank you. Now that I think of it, there are 4 of them. One at the top by my parents. One just down the hill. Then, two more at the very bottom of the hill, that drain into the creek, that leads to the park at the bottom of the valley, that always gets extra swampy after it rains. They aren't the most pleasant things to look at, but they do their jobs well. There's rarely any really bad problems with flooding in that area. #InfrastructureNerd #RunAlongSentences

[@xSuperFryx]

Wow this video was really good. New subscriber now!

[@redviper7192]

You put so much effort and extremely captivating and good editing. My favorite informational channel by far. Keep it up!

[@Lam]

Wow, thanks! Really appreciate it!

[@xXpkMastersXx]

I subscribed for dash cams, but stayed for the new videos, keep it up!

[@wizkid1]

My city (milwaukee Wisconsin) has been removing the concrete channels and restoring to a more natural type of river. Lets more water back into the ground. Slows down the water to Lake Michigan and helps negate drowning that happens frequently from people playing around the channels

[@JonniStar251]

Very interesting video, your thought process and these designs are similar to that of my mindset in city management and infrastructure because the capital city of my island has a lot of flash floods

[@mybugatti100]

Love these styles of videos. Please keep it up!

[@PushingThroughThePain]

This was fascinating! Thank you for sharing😊

[@quincymiller3639]

I’m really happy I ran into this video, I’m interning with a city this summer and was doing work in one of these just a few days ago, the coolest part that I noticed when looking at the one within my city was the “grit chambers”. These chambers are at the inlets and allow for the sediment to settle in the camber instead of in retention pond area. These chambers are also used throughout the whole city to keep sediment from going into lakes and rivers.

[@reyd286]

Holy shit, people learned to not re-settle in a disaster site? amazing!

[@iamjamieq]

So weird that you're based in my hometown of Toronto, and the one city you used when you showed a map of retention ponds was my new home, Charlotte. But yeah, there's a ton of retention ponds here and all over the south. There's two in just my neighborhood.

[@dc2guy2]

And here I am a native Charlottean wanting to move to Kensington Market lol

[@PrograError]

As a Singaporean, I can see that we mostly went with the Tokyo Grey style, with the greenery as garnish. here our Secondary stormwater drains goes quite deep and wide (due to tropical rain), and most of the drains are part of the pedestrian network which outflow also into the larger Primary stormwater drain which are part of the nominal river/ waterways concrete up like in LA and Toronto. tho in bukit timah (one of the more flood prone area) the government built a tokyo-style "prison" underground retention pond, but it's quite a small one. One good thing about the government planning is almost all of the essential infrastructure, MRT/ LRT and the like, is more or less legislative mandated to need a 1-2m ramp to withstand flooding (tho older buildings needed retrofits for floodgates)

[@abhijitpawar7149]

Great video. My country, India, has a lot to learn and implement the same. Hope our local city corporations will build the same flood protection infrastructure some day.

[@kellybrown8638]

What a wonderful video. Andrew, you have a gift for teaching

[@elchappii9364]

The videos you put out are truly incredible. As a person with no connection to engineering or how things work, all I can say is that they are so engaging and make me wonder.

[@Lam]

That's perfect, in many ways it's designed for the everyday person, just like me

[@ShArUiA123]

Glad to see you back!

[@johnlee7164]

The California storm somehow led me here. Great video! Well researched, more people should watch it.

[@Duke4Sask]

Excellent video. Very informative and the production values are great

[@yogitam2372]

Video is so good I am sharing this.