Extreme Urban and Rural Floods

Preparing the Built Environment and Strengthening Food Security
To meet me
Elevator
Rooms and Tools
Reception

In the changed and still changing climate, extreme precipitation events are rapidly intensifying. The resulting urban floods impact a built environment designed for the past, and rural floods threaten food security in many countries. Join us here to develop a a better understanding of the probability of extreme urban and rural floods are changing and of the risks associated with the impacts of these events on the built environment and our food security. Help us to find pathways to adapt the built environment in a proactive, socially just, and economically feasible way for a future with extreme river and urban flooding. Help us to develop a food supply system that is resilient in the face of widespread loss of agricultural production due to extreme rural floods.

ExtremeFloods VCC Billboard
News
ExtremeFloods VCC News

[Jan. 26, 2026] Devastating Floods in southern Africa mobilize Crocodiles: Rachel Savage reports in an article in The Guardian that crocodile warnings have been issued because the extreme flood waters bring crocodiles with them. More than a hundred people have been killed by the flood waters, and hundreds of thousands have been displaced in South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. In southern Mozambique at least three people were killed by crocodiles that came with the flood water of the Limpopo River.Platform News

[Feb. 24, 2026] New Scenario for 2028 Points to an AI-related Highly Undesirable Future for Economy: Aisha Down and Dan Milmo discuss in their article “‘A feedback loop with no brake’: how an AI doomsday report shook US markets” the scenario study “THE 2028 GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE CRISIS A Thought Exercise in Financial History, from the Future” by Citrini and Alap Shah posted on February 22, 2026 on Substack. This study points out that the financial system of today was optimized over decades for a world of scarce human minds. AI changed this: “This is the first time in history the most productive asset in the economy has produced fewer, not more, jobs. Nobody’s framework fits, because none were designed for a world where the scarce input became abundant. So we have to make new frameworks. Whether we build them in time is the only question that matters.” The authors point out that the economy could find a new equilibrium, and “getting to this new equilibrium is one of the few tasks left that only humans can do. We need to do it correctly.”

[Feb. 12, 2026] Are we already at or close to a Point of no Return?: Damian Carrington raises this question in his article in the Guardian titled “Point of no return: a hellish ‘hothouse Earth’ getting closer, scientists say.” The most recent paper by Ripple et al. assesses “The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory,” and the author's conclusions are pointing to an increasing probability of Earth moving into a hothouse state. The assessment should be an alarm bell for all of us. Continuing on the current path of our economy and society comes with the high risk of mass extinction, and the current uncertainty could soon turn into certainty.