It is NOT 'the fullness of the time' that is the problem, it is the fullness of the river.

hey we might get flooded in september/october ? thai solution : let's have them a little flood now already

As this is a man made problem will all the insurance claims now be thrown out ? Corporate and private.

And if you foresee this coming again in rainy season you are also entitled to move to higher ground right?

Many thanks for your helpful advice. I'm sure I can find a highway overpass from where I can watch my family's property being slowly turned into useless wet garbage.

Good thing there are floor drains in the bathrooms,

PM clone would flood her place with these kind of water management skills.

Live in Thailand, buy houseboat.

"In a related development, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra was scheduled to inspect the provinces along the riverways on Feb 13-17 to follow up on the repair work of dams and sluice gates that were damaged by the flood last year. (MCOT online news)"

Not so many people paid attention to this fact. I have read an article long ago that the damage sluice gate caused 5 billion cubic meters to escape from the said dam. I'm trying to search for the article again. Anyway, I think I can estimate the discharge capacity for the failed sluice gate. Not so many sizes of such gate available 30 ++ years ago. Back here in my country we have many of such gate. Its capacity could be around 1,500m3/s. If the gate completely washed away by water then total unstopable discharge is close to 4 billion cubic meter per month! This is very close to the figure given by the article.

Wasn't someone saying on here earlier today how well the government had managed the floods?

Haven't most of the armchair experts that frequent tv said "To prevent a repeat of last year all they have to do is empty the dams now"

They said that? That too bad. Thailand needs new experts then.

Thai rivers flow upstream, but the little barges can fix that. Thai gravity is different to farlang gravity. Now where is that shopping mall?

Live in Thailand, buy houseboat.

I think you need a Thai proxy to buy the house boat !!!

The engineers amongst us (and probably those non-engineers with a bit of common sense) will understand what a 'closed loop' control system is. Monitor what is happening and control the input accordingly.

i.e. Watch what is happening downstream and if it looks like flooding will occur soon reduce the quantity of water being released. If it rains, reduce the release proportionately. The system will have massive inertia so make sure there is plenty of leeway. It really isn't rocket science.

You are very close real time flood control and mitigation. But the actual operation starts from planning. 75% of the success of flood control lies on planning, assuming all the required structures are available!

When the authorities dare to share the idea of underground tunnel as the most promising solution to flood control, I'm afraid they don't know exactly what they are up against. In order to understand what I'm trying to say let me explain what Thailand needs to have to deal with the flood of the size equivalent to the 2011 flood, unhurt.

The plan ---- To deal with influx of flood water 15 billion cubic meters that fall in 14 days for the entire Cjao Pharaya catchments-The biggest in 50 years or 2% probability of occurence every year.

The objective--- To stay dry.

The strategy.

Bhumibol and Sirkit dams have to have 7billion cubic meters of storage margin by 1st Oct every year. This margin shall be controlled in such a a manner that it becomes not less than 1billion cubic meters by the 15th Nov every year. If required, open the sluice gates gradually to preserve the requirement to have at least 1billion cubic meters margin preserved until 15th Nov.

So we have another 8 billion cubic meters to deal with. The Chao Pharaya can be made to discharge at the rate of 1 billion cubic meters in 14 days, harmless. So we have another 7 billion cubic meters that we have to find way to hold them. If the dams operations are efficiently coordinated Pasak dams can hold at most 0.5billion cubic meters. Thus, if Thailand has another dams dowstream to Nakhon Sawan that can store another 6.5 billion cubic meters, then it is in position to deal with the flood size equivalent to the 2011 flood. Otherwise 6.5 billion cubic meters of "stray" water will be flowing via Chao Pharaya, bursting both of its river banks at least for one month. The first degree flood flow can reach up to 55,000m3/s but last for at most 8 hours. It follows by second degree flood flow of 5,400 m3/s that can last for 328 hours. It is practically impossible to size up the proposed tunnel to take 5,400-55,000 m3/s of flow.

The sure work solution is to have series of dams between Nakhon Sawan until BKK. The total storage is about 6.5 billion cubic meters. Lastly, Thailand needs the persons who know how to manage its water resources efficiently and effectively. Validity of my last sentence has already been proven, I supposed.