Floating Houses Designed For Low-Lying Countries

Zothecula writes "Venice may soon be sharing its 'Floating City' moniker thanks to a research project developing 'amphibian houses' that are designed to float in the event of a flood. The FLOATEC project sees the primary market for the houses as the Netherlands, whose low-lying land makes it particularly susceptible to the effects of rising sea levels. Such housing technology could also allow small island-states in the Indian and Pacific Oceans that are at the risk of disappearing in the next 100 years to maintain their claim to statehood through the use of artificial, floating structures."

Comments

uh-oh

[RenHoek]

Floating houses for low-lying countries?!?

Do they know something I don't?

Signed,

    Suspicious, from the Netherlands

Re:uh-oh

[wvmarle]

It's indeed nothing new. The Netherlands has them for decades already. The only somewhat-new part here is that these houses are amphibian (i.e. floating only when there is a flood, most of the time sitting on dry ground), and even that's something I've heard about for well a decade or so at least. And yes that's also related to Dutch houses.

Indeed reading TFA it's a Dutch company (Dura Vermeer) that's been developing such homes for the past 12 years. Nothing new under the sun. Also it seems no spectacular new developments in the field recently, there is ongoing innovation of course but it doesn't seem to be game-changing.

Oh well. It's good filler for the /. home page at least.

Re:uh-oh

[grouchomarxist]

Note that the specific phrase "floating houses" gets less than 300,000 hits.

Re:uh-oh

[Intrepid imaginaut]

sarah palin worships atan and eats babies also get over two thousand results, and Google prompts you with the question, "do you mean sarah palin worships satan and eats babies?" The search results do not mean what you think they mean.

Re:Is it just me, or does this look like

[c0lo]

And doesn't Floating city sound terribly prone to be destroyed by hurricane?

If it truly floats, redesigned rather.

Re:landfill

[Anonymous Coward]

Would? We already do. And by the way, some of us here aren't complete douches and think helping your neighbors is the right thing to do. We're all humans and my family certainly didn't evolve here naturally. I have no more right to this land than you or anyone else.

Re:Hmmm.. yeah...

[ColdWetDog]

Such housing technology could also allow small island-states in the Indian and Pacific Oceans

What's next? "Floating rainwater basins", "floating desalination plants" or "regular shipment of bottled water"?
"Floating coconut farms" maybe?

These guys are just out there. You're going to float a house on Styrofoam in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? Maybe they've been fooled by the name (Pacific - Peaceful) but one little baby typhoon is going to put your Styrofoam and assorted crap in the middle of the Pacific garbage patch. If you want to create floating cities, then go ahead and do so. The tech is there, it's just expensive.

This might work in a low lying area that gets flooded every couple of years (although the stilt idea previously mentioned seems easier) but it's not going to float well. Somebody needs to torpedo this concept before anyone gets wet.

US gov't insurance

[__aazsst3756]

A lot of problems would go away if the US would simply get rid of its government flood insurance program. If you want to build a house somewhere its likely to get flooded, and its too risky for a private insurer to cover, and the bank won't loan without insurance... it won't get built. .

Re:US gov't insurance

[westlake]

A lot of problems would go away if the US would simply get rid of its government flood insurance program.

It is the sort of thing kids used to be taught about geography in grade school.

You build along the river because the river provides cheap transportation, fresh water and power. The river often ends in a seaport - giving you a chance to become a major player in coastal and foreign trade.

Periodic flooding means that your valley remains fertile, perhaps as fertile as the Mississippi Delta.

For extra credit:

Map the flood plain of the Mississippi, the Missouri and their tributaries.

Count the number of people dependent on these rivers for their living, calculate the cost of moving every one of them to higher ground --- including the cost to American trade, agriculture and industry.

Nothing new

[AG the other]

When I was growing up, during visits to my grandmothers we would visit the Ouachita river to fish. Yes it's a word. It's from some Amerind culture.
There were lots of structures that were built on 55 gallon barrels and tied to trees with big ropes for the annual floods. They even had a union in the gas pipe so that the gas could be turned off and the house allowed to float up off the foundation.
When the flood was over the neighbors would get together and help put everyone's house back where they belonged.
Floating houses another recycled idea. Hopefully someone hasn't tried to patent it. There is plenty of prior art.

Re:Aren't they called houseboats?

[wagnerrp]

Not exactly. They build their homes on stilts, so they remain above water during the seasonal flooding.

Re:landfill

[h5inz]

What junk? Typical landfill junk decomposition produces dioxins. There is a reason why you don't want your house on a graveyard or a landfill. Also what about the drinking water? I bet the surrounding sea ecosystem wouldn't be overly happy about it either.

Re:Claim to Statehood?

[Sique]

Too much legalese.

The current international law is just a collection of all the contracts and agreements that have proved to either work well enough to be enforced or to be of so theoretical nature that no one ever had a reason to challenge it.

So whenever a situation occurs that was never part of the considerations around those rules, the rules will be written anew. There is no Supreme World Court (ok., there is the International Criminal Court, but it is ignored by the U.S.), which decides case law and provides some sort of continous interpretation and development of the rules.