Preventive measures

• Construct pumping stations, water gates, tunnels.
• Making sure that gullies work.
  • Road gullies should be checked and cleaned frequently to ensure that they are not blocked or collapsed. Where there is a large area feeling towards a low spot, this area should be checked to ensure that there are adequate gullies and that they are effectively taking the water.

• Flood barriers are effective means to stop excessive amount of water rushing into low grounds.
• For example, Bangkok.
  • In Bangkok, the Department of Drainage and Sewerage has a massive construction program of building flood barriers:
    a. Flood barriers were built along the Chao Phraya River. It has a total length of about 88 kilometers completed. It will have barrier range from 2.5 to 3 meters above mean sea level.
    b. They have elevated the Eastern King’s dike.
    c. Along the northern side, construction of flood barrier along Klong Mahasawad in Thonburi.

• In some of the existing water retention basins, although the capacity of draining water from the area is enough in normal circumstances, in time of excessive rainfall, it is necessary to allocate areas to be used as retention basins for detaining such amount of water to prevent flooding in low areas, road, and streets.
• Bangkok is running a very successful program in the Monkey Cheek Area. It involves a public as well as private water retention programs.
  • Private Monkey Cheek is a small retention basin in private land to detain water from houses and housing villages by specifying in the BMA regulations and promoting cooperation from the private sector.
  • Public Monkey Cheek is large area to detain large amount of water from canals. Presently, there are Monkey Cheeks available to detain water of about 7 million cu.m. the remaining areas to further accommodate 6 million cu.m. of water has to be acquired as soon as possible.

• Land owner must not construct bridges, fences or other permanent structures across watercourses nor should they restrict the flow capacity by constructing erosion protection within the channel. Nothing should be stored on the banks in such a place or way that it may be washed away or fall in.
• Watercourses must not be used to dispose of debris, even seemingly innocuous materials such as grass cuttings. Such debris may combine with wind blown debris, twigs, etc. to cause blockage of grills and thus a flooding incident.