Practical Engineering - 2016-03-07
Today on Practical Engineering we're talking about hydrology, and I took a little walk through my neighborhood to show you some infrastructure you may have never noticed before. Almost everyone agrees that flooding is bad. Most years it’s the number one natural disaster in the US by dollars of damage. So being able to characterize flood risks is a crucial job of civil engineers. Engineering hydrology has equal parts statistics and understanding how society treats risks. Water is incredibly important to us, and it shapes almost every facet of our lives, but it’s almost never in the right place at the right time. Sometimes there’s not enough, like in a drought or just an arid region, but we also need to be prepared for the times when there’s too much water, a flood. Rainfall and streamflow have tremendous variability and it’s the engineer’s job to characterize that so that we can make rational and intelligent decisions about how we develop the world around us. Thanks for watching! FEMA Floodplain Maps: https://msc.fema.gov/portal USGS Stream Gages: http://maps.waterdata.usgs.gov/mapper... I use all Patreon earning to improve the quality (and quantity!) of videos: https://www.patreon.com/PracticalEngineering http://practical.engineering Music: Doctor Vox - Gold (https://youtu.be/VM-hX0BQf40)
This is precisely the content that I WANT to watch on YouTube, but am never quite able to track down.
Some other fun things that you can find here in the Netherlands that were caused by the water issues we have are so called "kolkgaten". As far as I am aware, a real translation for them doesn't really exist. What they are, are very deep holes, made when water breaks throuh a dyke. The Water comes pouring out at such a high velocity and quantity it sweeps away vasts amount of soil beneath the break in the dyke. It is usually way cheaper and easier to simply build a new dyke around it than it is to fill it up with soil again. What is left behind is called a "wiel" (literal translation being "wheel"). The biggest one in the Netherlands is called Wiel van Bassa, found near Diefdijk. Nowadays, these incidents happen way less often due to the improvements we made to our infrastructure a long time ago.
Another fun thing we did was that we tried to "normalize" a river. We cut corners in our rivers quite literally, to make them straighter. The idea behind this was that not only would make it easier to sail the rivers, it would also make water drain better. A side effect of this was that we now end dead river ends. These were transformed into leisure and recreational areas often. Unfortunately, the idea wasn't completely water proof as cutting corners made the rivers shorter. This meant that there was less "river" for the river to put its water in when lots of water came rushing down from places upstream. This caused the water levels to rise even farther than they would have before the procedure when lots of water wants to come through at once. A typical example of this can be found near the village of Boxmeer.
Thirdly and probably most famous of all, we used to have something called the Zuiderzee. As the name implies, this was a sea including the saltiness of seawater. After a particularly bad disaster we decided we no longer wanted to be bothered with it anymore so we built the Afsluitdijk. We closed off the entire Zuiderzee from the sea, causing it to go from salt sea water to fresh water in 1,5 years. This ofcourse changed the entire ecosystem in this area tremendously, casuing many changes. A little while later we decided the Netherlands could use some more farmland. Instead of conquering foreign territory we decided it was probably easier and much more comfortable for everyone if we simply drained a part of what now is the IJsselmeer, the lake that we once called a sea. This newfound land is now known as a province called Flevoland.
The Dutch have done some crazy things with water for a very, very long time.
@bosnakedisniksic I dont have a real answer to that but you can make sure that the Dutch made all efforts in order to do something about that, as they do with many things! They are good thinkers and designers in general. And quite "eco-responsible" to say the least, for many good reasons, probably primarily involving tremendous quantities of water litterally hanging above their heads - huge part of the country is meters under the sea level.
I remember awful TV news about two man, who went with boat for evening fishing in nearest lake. Next morning there were no lake and no boat, people from shore saw a giant whirpool, they had no chances, for the half an hour all water gone underground.
In the US we call this a bridge scour, or scour hole. The US almost had one of the biggest engineering disasters in the world in 1973 at what is known as the Old River Control Structure. The Mississippi river wants to change course and follow the Atchafalaya river basin to the ocean. In 1900 around 5 percent of the Mississippi water diverted to Atchafalaya, by 1950 it was 30 percent. In 1960 the control structure was finished to prevent the course change and keep the water ratio at 70/30. The 1973 flood was the most voluminous flood since 1927. Massive scour holes developed on both sides of the structure, one upstream that was over 50 feet deep and larger than a football field, and another downstream that was even larger. Less than 150 feet of soil remained between the holes. Had it collapsed millions of acres would have been permanently flooded and the Mississippi would no longer flow to New Orleans as the primary channel.
The Dutch have also done some some crazy things with soccer haha
ringgeest11 I think you are talking about piping and seepage
That feel when 7 out of 9 of your friends in your standard deviation excel spreadsheet are made up
Yeah, Duke Flitznippler is totally real...
@Practical Engineering Charles. No last name, just Charles.
Not convinced Made-Up Friend 5 and Made-Up Friend 6 are different people. Maybe they are clones.
That was good. You didn't insult anyone's intelligence or tried to joke through the hard stuff.
@bobsagget823 Dude, what the hell?
@Predawn Precipitation If you look at the discussion tab on his channel, you'll see people have been leaving mean comments for six years. Either he's still quite young (and he started his channel when he was, like, ten) or he's been an asshole for a long, long time.
bobsagget823 .
@J.J. Shank I can only pity someone with such incredible agressivity and lack of control, and decency, tbh. Waw. And such arrogance! I dont know how much I would have understood myself, without a course on statistics during biology cursus, this was more technical than the usual Practical Engineering video to me. Yet fascinating as most episodes!
Nor act goofy and condescending
In this case the 100 year flood actually was what I thought it was.
Harvey is gone Irma is coming, every month a 100-1000 year risk.
Willie van het Kerkhof
To hell with Harvey. May we never see another Harvey like hurricane again.
same here
I don't understand why people would expect it to be anything different. When I first heard the term "100 years flood" I thought "The size of flood that would occur on average once per 100 years?". Admittedly I termed it that way in my head, not "the flood size with a 1% chance of occurring each year", though that is a fairly simple mathematical relation, and if asked for the chance per year I would have replied with 1%
Yeah, same. Though I guess as a Dutch person I already have a larger than average reason to know this stuff.
We need more YouTube channels like this!
Starfish Prime look at Real Engineering, Wendover Productions, 1blue3brown, and The Engineer Guy
Youtube would still ban and remove them as its systems would see as it is reading material from a book becomes a copyright violation. Even humming a song Youtube would remove it.
"Good enough." - The entire methodology of my hydrogeology class.
Practical Engineering and imperial units ల(｀°Δ°)
:P
ZeGamingCuber The intelligent set of units which uses 10^n to change orders of magnitude.
Practical Engineering Pls don’t
I prefer Chains, old school here...lol
I feel left out. What the fuck are ya'll talking about?
@Michael Toomey You went to the moon on SI, with a conversion to imperial for the guys in the rocket.
I work for the USGS, was nice to see the recognition, thanks.
Not being mean, I've always heard the public sector is where you go when you can't cut it in the private. How true is that?
Absolutely not true. Some of the sharpest engineers I've ever worked with were from public agencies like USGS, USBR, and USACE.
The public sector gets more scrutiny than anything in the private sector, because so many in the private sector rely on the information they provide. You're probably mistaking your experience at the DMV, which is a state thing, not a federal one.
Public or private, it all boils down to the individual's motivation to do the right thing
I'm a Water Resources Engineer pursuing my master's. Most of my work is depend on the data collected from USGS. So thanks 👍
If there are floods the British newspapers are like "heavy rainfall causes floods." Dutch newspapers are like "bad in construction and maintenance of dikes causes floods." (sorry for my English, I'm dutch and dyslexic.)
That is because god may have created the earth, but the Dutch created the Netherlands.
@Marco Polo blame everything on the Russians except the president they put in office. :)
Your English is fine. I enjoyed your literal translation. It gives me a feel for your language.
BBC promotes victimhood. NL takes responsibility? NL is intelligent.
Yes to an extent but some of us still remember 1953. Now that was a most interesting tidal surge and since then there have been two schools of thought a) embankment and b) controlled flood zones - a more recent concept. A, requires huge maintenance especially if the land is subject to tectonic tilt as in East of England. B requires acceptance that certain areas become flood buffer zones and as such unsuitable for a built environment. Less intensive and expensive maintenance is required. For the Dutch if the required more land without invading their neighbours reclamation was the only option.
A great example of dynamic teaching using web technology will replace standard engineering courses. Comprehension is everything : )
Missed a chance for a pun at 7:04: "[water] shapes every facet of our lives" and faucet of our lives!
Mmm, that is actually exactly what I thought the 100 year flood was. The only people confused were the people who think that they can be "due" when gambling or something.
It seems a lot less crazy to believe there might be cyclical behaviors in nature than in the behavior of dice. This is especially true since we know the days, months, years, and seasons are cyclical as are less well known phenomena like earth's axis precession, the sun's 11-year cycle, a possible 105-year cycle seen in carbon-14 studies, and more. It's not just astrologists or gambling junkies who might think a "100-year flood" probably refers to something cyclical, even if it doesn't.
Yeah dumbasses be dumb as usual.
They are not dumbasses automatically; they just haven't studied this particular thing enough to know.
It’s a misleading term. You can get a 100-year event every year, it just depends on the size of area you are observing.
ericv00 Honestly, that has to be one of the funniest things I’ve heard all week, especially concerning such a dry topic ba dum tss as this.
I think you did our job as civil engineer in educating the society and inspiring young people. Never stop posting!
that just made my brain hurt... but good stuff.
Chase Mixon he feeds information too quickly and often does not explain much about a concept and rushes to the next one.
new2k16rapper Pretty much how lectures work in higher education.
The information he presented was very bare-bone. Explaining every single concept in this video would take hours assuming the viewers have the basic knowledge of fluid mechanics.
And no this is not how lectures woke in higher ed, it's meant for an audience with little to no knowledge regarding the subject. He barely went over any math except for some basic statistics and rudimentary formulas.
Basically all you need to know is that take the phrase "x year flood". Take that x and put it in the fraction 1/x and then convert that fraxtion to a percentage. So a 100 year flood would be 1/100 which equals 1%. The larger the x the least likely it will flood in that area
And with recent happenings in Texas, this video has made it's way in to the Recommended Videos again.
5:33 so floods in the US are managed by the CIA?
Not just US everywhere well they haven't bin alowed to do any fun in the us since the 70's though
Just found the channel through Hydraulic Press Channel and I'm loving it, immediately subscribed!
Really well put together videos with fantastic pacing and a pleasing balance between the accessibility and depth of the content.
floods are dangerous and can attack at any time. We must deal with it
vat da fak!
Well done, thank you! It felt like a nice, quick refreshment course for me.
I loved this! My child thought this was confusing. (He's requested that I comment about that, so take it for what it's worth. :) )
Using normal distribution, what percentage of people are 7 meters tall?
@thorr18BEM 10^10 people born throughout history? But there are 7.7 * 10^9 people alive right now... That number seems way low!
@Mikkel Højbak well, perhaps as high as 11^10 if we include the current population. There were comparatively very few humans for most of our history and zero humans for most of Earth's history.
@thorr18BEM A quick google gave an estimate of 107 billion people throughout history, so 10^11 would be close enough. Also, 11^10 is just 25.9 billion, or 159% more than the 10 billion you first stated - not the ten times I think you expected. 😉
@Mikkel Højbak oops
@Practical Engineering I found that it would be roughly zero. Here is a chart based on a sample pdf I fit from kaggle -
https://imgur.com/NQRRHLx.jpg
https://imgur.com/MUJzXg1.jpg (non-logged axis)
Oh, so the 100-year flood actually IS what I thought it was.
Don't know how many times that I've tried to explain 100 year storms to people, I never do as well as you. Maybe someday explain retention basins and metered outfall. Don't know if that's in the code in Texas, but here in Ohio they've been a big part of the building code for about the last 20 years.
been doing basins here in NJ since the 50's or so. we'e elevated it to a level of requiring some kind of Mage to figure out how to make them do all the regulatory requirements - water quality, erosion control, infiltration, flood control. Yikes!
Hi, I'm a civil engineer specializing in water resources, I've never heard of "metered outfall," what does that mean?
i am so stupidd that i dont really understand most of what he said . certain things just make sense while the other stuff is just extra words added to make it sound professional .
“#1 disaster”
Then that person had a pretty big pee
I think you forgot the link to the FEMA flood plain maps. Great video, though. Very interesting!
+TheBookDoctor Fixed! Good catch.
Keep Making Cool Stuff!
Studying Mech. Eng. in school right now, I really enjoy seeing these videos. It's a good reminder that engineering is more than just studying.
0:25 I haven't completed watching the vid, but I know its gonna be good.
The fact that this video appeared on my feed right after Hurricane Harvey.
Woo woo, Hydrology major represent.
AdamOrnelles usually you need a masters for hydrology
enjoyed.
would like to know more about arc events.
As per usual I learned a couple of things and enjoyed the process.
also two of my favorite topics; its so rare to find people who love systems-engineering.
Instant sub; Ill be viewing your vids
exactly what I expect from any technical channel, focus on that speciality you love so much :) Of course it's also nice to go off topic from time to time whenever you feel like it
I KNEW IT! In one of your other videos I saw a highway underpass that looked very familiar... From Austin, you are!
I am always bragging about my rainfall gauge ;D
8
CIA responsible for the 100 year flood. #confirmed
Thank you, Mr Covefefe. ;)
The theories over the government is cancer
u mean CIA the formula ? >.< loool
No such formula (or aliens)
Thanks, your passion helps me develop an interest, perfect speech, pronunciation and speed. Keep up the good work
5:04 nice.
Yeah; gotta love that stream gauge. 😉
Bruh.
haha I was gonna say that too #buns
I knew that comment would be here
As a Civil Eng student I loved the video, it really helped my understanding of this topic.
that throw at the end ?! :D:D:D hahahha
Love these educational vids way more than howto's/tutorials!
Great video. As a fellow civil engineer, I have to explain this all the time. The other confusing issue for lay people is the 1% flood vs the 1% storm and why they dont occur during corresponsing rain events... Keep up the great work.
ha, Civils, with your using imperial units, and you're huge estimations, and your concrete canoes.
Geoffrey Vonbargen and providing clean safe potable water to your house that conveniently comes out of a tap that you can turn on and off at will. Then to 'tap' it off (sorry couldn't resist) we'll also provide you with a convenient way to remove your wastewater and treat it for you.
Thank you Civ Eng.
Imperical units is not something typical to this field of research. More like geographical uche the USA uche
i would really love to know the overflow of a swale or dam with any given catchment to know how big to build the overflow.
Awesome vid, don't stop them <3
I'm a first year civ eng student, who's currently fascinated and loving it all, and your videos just make me feel even more fortunate to belong to the fantastic universe of civil engineering <3.
This video might have my favorite graphic of all time: Rainfall -----> Engineering -----> Stream Flow.The greatest engineering graphic ever created!
6:07
Can't you just use metric?
Thank you, Thank you for posting all this wonderful interesting information. As a non-science major, I find your presentation fascinating!
6:17 1.008 ft3/s blew my mind. I could never understand how that equation worked out.
Basil Gan - 2016-05-25
This is certainly more than an informative video. It's like a free full lecture on hydrology itself. I'd rather consider this class attendance.
Benny - 2017-09-03
Agreed!
James Wyatt - 2018-11-07
Love it - YouTube is the diploma mill for The Iggnorati!
Kidding aside, I'm hoping some schools include videos like this the way we used to watch film-strips and 16mm movies. The better ones are as good as some of my core university material for a given topic or concept.
My youngest son and I use YT videos for car repair like I used to use Chilton's manuals, but never just follow one. Lots of excellent content, but Chilton's had better QA...
bobsagget823 - 2019-06-03
moron
Shaggy - 2019-06-06
Don't act like you understood all this shit
Richard Joyce - 2020-03-12
Thats life, there is always a lesson to be learned if you just look.