Build & test your levee
You're the Design Lead · Career lens: Civil Engineer
Build a levee, flood test it, and use your own measurements and results to decide what needs to change.
Use accurate dimensions.
See how the levee performs.
Use evidence to back your decision.
Riverside Bend, a neighborhood on the Chattahoochee
Riverside Bend is a made-up neighborhood of about 400 homes sitting on the inside curve of the Chattahoochee River in Columbus, Georgia. The land there is low — most of it sits about 2.4 meters above normal river level — and a single road, Bend Road, connects it to the elementary school and the clinic on higher ground.
Two springs ago the river rose past 2.8 meters and water reached the first row of houses. The city water utility put the job out for bids before the next high-water season, and your team is the small engineering firm they hired to solve it. You have a $1.2 million budget, a strip of public greenway along the bank to build on, and a rule that Bend Road must stay open during a flood. At the end you present your design to the city and say why it is worth the money.
The city water utility hired your team as the engineering firm on the Riverside Bend job.
About 400 homes, the only road out, and the money the city can actually spend.
How high and how wide to build, and who is protected first if you can't protect everyone.
- River level, normal
- 0.0 m baseline
- Highest recent crest
- 2.87 m
- Neighborhood elevation
- 2.4 m above baseline
- Build budget
- $1.2 million
Riverside Bend is a practice setting built for this demonstration. The river, the flood heights, and the kind of decision are real to Columbus, Georgia; the neighborhood name and the budget are not.
Our build
- 01CutTwo 30 cm × 4 cm foam strips for the wall.
- 02PlaceSet them along the river bend on your model.
- 03Pour500 mL upstream. Time how long it holds.
- 04RecordThree observations. One photo before, one after.
2 of 4 pieces of evidence ready
Standards today: MGSE6.G.2 · S6E5.c · ELAGSE6W1