Extreme Urban and Rural Floods

Preparing the Built Environment and Strengthening Food Security
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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

[Aug 29, 2026] A Changing Climate comes with Extreme Floods and Mudflows: The deadly flash flood and mudflow in Nepal and neighboring countries on August 26, 2026 was the result of a catastrophic breakdown of a large part of a glacier in the Himalayas. There are reasons to assume that the friction between ice masses of the glacier and the underlying rock was reduced because of a changing climate bring higher temperatures into the region.
We can expect that increasing temperatures will destabilize many other regions global and cause hazards of unprecedented type and intensity. These hazards will often interact with a build environment not prepared for these new hazards. An example are the extreme precipitation events and the many aging reservoir dams in many countries, including the USA. The extreme events can easily lead to a breaking of the dams and extreme flash floods.

News

ExtremeFloods VCC News

[Oct 25, 2026] Earth is in a deglaciation: There is mounting evidence that Earth has entered a post-Holocene deglaciation. The Guardian article by Oliver Milman title “The US west has lost nearly 300 glaciers since the 1960s. Climate crisis is drastically shrinking what’s left” provides one of the many evidence pieces showing that Earth is heading for an ice-free state. In the process, many extreme floods caused by ice melt can be expected.

Platform News

[Nov 03, 2026] AI is in all Google Searches but not on Place4Us: As Johana Bhuiyan reports in the article “Google says there’s no way to use Search without using artificial intelligence”, Google has made clear that all Google searches use AI. Anybody who uses Google search therefore supports the uncontrolled development of AI. The article unfortunately does not point to alternatives. DuckDuckgo.com, for example, allows switching of AI totally for all searches. It should be made mandatory that users can switch off AI in whatever service they utilize. Importantly, we working on Place4Us make every effort to keep AI away from the platform.

[Sep 26, 2026] “Digital Technology should be governed by people for people”: Joseph Gorden-Levit, the UN Global Advocate for Human-centric Digital Governance, in his opening remarks (starting at about 20:00 in the recordings) at the Digital Cooperation Day 2026 emphasized that “the decision we make in this moment are going to have a massive impact on everyone's life, on the whole future of humanity.” He underlined that how “digital technology is designed and developed and deployed should be governed by people for people.” The challenge is that some believe digital technology should be governed by the market. Place4Us is designed and governed by people and for people with no role to play for the market.

[Sep 26, 2026] “In the absence of truth, trust deteriorates”: This is what Mia Amor Mottley made very clear in her amazing speech at the 81st United Nations General Assembly. She said: “When we luck truth and we luck trust law becomes theater, News become spectacle, and science becomes just another opinion.” With respect to the ongoing ecocide in Gaza she quoted the Roman historian Tacitus who reported a statement of a Scottish chieftain about the Roman soldiers: “They make it desert and they call it Peace.”

[Sep 21, 2026] End Times Fascism: The book “End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World” by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor underlines that the End Times Fascist have given up on humanity and this world. They are not only building the arks for themselves, they also accelerate the coming of the flood.

[Sep 21, 2026] Meta and Instagram ban ads with “social topics”: Stephen Burgen reports in the Guardian article “Meta bans ads for Virginia Woolf play in Spain because they relate to feminism” that Meta explained that “any mention of civil rights, feminism or social reform are usually classified as ‘social topics’ by our automatic system” and are filtered out. These topics are central to Woolf’s work. As reported, Meta recommended removing “key words” so that the text doesn’t appear to encourage activism. This underlines the importance of Place4Us, where social topics are at the forefront and activism is encouraged.

[Sep 13, 2026] "They are traitors to creation, to the wonders of here": Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor in their article “The end times fascists are plotting their escape from our world. Our mission is clear” make clear that the unholy alliance of the billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and others, who suffer from an absence of awe in the face of the unique beauty of our home planet, is working toward an apocalyptic future from which only they as the chosen few will emerge unscathed. The authors claim that it is becoming clear how we stop them.