Protecting Our City with Levees
Students design and build their own model levees. Acting as engineers for their city, teams create sturdy barriers to prevent water from flooding a city in the event of a hurricane.
Levees protect towns from floodingCopyright Infrogmation, March, 2005. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GretnaLevee.jpg
Civil engineers design projects to support the needs of people living together. Without civil engineers, we would not have roads and bridges to drive on, water systems to bring us fresh water for drinking and bathing, or sewage systems for carrying away our waste. In coastal regions, these engineers play an essential role in protecting people from natural disasters, such as hurricanes. To prevent flooding from hurricanes, they design and build levees, flood walls, pump systems and canals. When these designs fail, engineers are called back in to evaluate what happened and why, as well as to make improvements and redesign.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- List the steps of the engineering design process.
- Describe a scale drawing and what units should be used.
- Describe the features of a successful levee.
- Understand what a natural disaster is.