Semester

Summer

Date of Graduation

2013

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MLA

College

Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design

Department

Landscape Architecture

Committee Chair

Charles B. Yuill.

Abstract

The frequency and the intensity of natural disasters, especially weather-related disasters such as storms or floods, have been increasing rapidly in the last 20 years. This trend is expected to continue to increase in the future due to climate change. Among natural hazards, floods are the most serious type, causing more cost and loss of life than any other natural hazard in the world. In addition, there are 27,000 dams, which is equal to 32% of all dams in the country, that have the potential to be damaged or fail. This could cause catastrophic damages in communities that exist downstream from those dams.;In the United States, disaster management has been addressed by new policies in government and new engineering techniques. However, their methods have not been successful in regards to flood management. They have not focused on coexisting with river dynamics, but controlling it to protect more properties for development along the river. The fundamental principle of landscape architecture is to create balance --- balance between the needs of people and the needs of the environment, between the manmade and the natural, as well as between development and conservation. From this perspective, landscape architectural methods could provide different and alternative choices for disaster management, other than that of the conventional methods.;This paper reviews one project conducted to achieve flood management planning and design from the landscape architectural perspective. The goal of this project is to propose landscape planning and designs focusing on flood management, based on a simulation of a Bluestone Dam failure. Bluestone Dam is one of many dams in West Virginia with a high hazard potential. The project is composed of two projects, one is in a community that lies upstream from the Bluestone Dam, and the other is in a community that is located downstream of the dam. The objective of the upper stream project was to mitigate the risk of failure to the dam through stormwater management planning. The objective of the downstream project was to propose planning and design to respond to the potential of a failure in the dam. The project concluded that stormwater management with Low Impact Development strategies would be a feasible and practical plan to mitigate the risk of dam failure. The project also proposed a successful plan of flexible waterfront designs which can respond to flood emergencies as well as be coexistent with local river dynamics.

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