Apropos the tragic Valencia flooding, it is worth noting the role that channelizing and re-routing the Turia River played here. After terrible floods in 1957, the Turia was, over more than a decade, and in a massive engineering project, re-routed south of the city. Its former course became sunken gardens (see attached figure of the former and new course).
The recent floods, as a result, followed the post-1957 channelized course, as you can see in the attached animation (via @WxNB_). Two implications can be drawn, one hydrological, one human.
1. Planners thought the city would grow north and west post-rerouting, but it largely grew south, straddling the new Turia course, increasing risk in the event of any future flooding.
2/ Channelized rivers have many consequences, one of which is they flow faster, like a smoothed bobsled run, increasingly the flooding risk downstream as more water gets there faster, which happened here.
1. Planners thought the city would grow north and west post-rerouting, but it largely grew south, straddling the new Turia course, increasing risk in the event of any future flooding.
2/ Channelized rivers have many consequences, one of which is they flow faster, like a smoothed bobsled run, increasingly the flooding risk downstream as more water gets there faster, which happened here.
The scale of the current tragedy continues to grow, but it is worth considering complexity and the second- and third-order consequences of the original decision to re-route the Turia south of Valencia. There are no good answers, of course, but there are always more questions.
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