How New York is building a giant shield against the sea
In the wake of the catastrophic damage caused by Superstorm Sandy in 2012, New York City is advancing a major coastal defense project known as the “Big U.” This initiative aims to protect the city’s extensive 520-mile waterfront—longer than the combined coastlines of Miami, Boston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco—from future deadly storm surges. The project represents a significant civil and mechanical engineering challenge, focusing on designing resilient infrastructure to shield a dense urban environment from the increasing threats posed by climate change and extreme weather.
Why it might matter to you:
This project exemplifies how engineering principles are applied to solve large-scale, real-world problems at the intersection of infrastructure, fluid dynamics, and environmental forces. For a mechanical engineer, it highlights the transition from deterministic design models to systems that must account for non-deterministic, chaotic environmental inputs. The success of such adaptive, large-scale protective systems could inform future approaches to designing infrastructure that interacts with complex natural phenomena.
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