Can Dams help to avoid fllods?

[Finch24]

Hello Community!

May be, it's irrelevant but I wanna clear my confusion that can we encounter floods by small and large dams? Asking this because I've seen horrible scenes of floods that has destroyed bug cities in Asian countries this month, and I'm surprised to know that they have very few dams there. What's the best solution to avoid these situations?

 

[dik]

Properly constructed dams can be used to regulate water flow.

So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

 

[IRstuff]

Dams can only withstand what they've been designed for, that limits their ability to protect against extreme events that exceed design guidelines.

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[swazimatt]

there are a few issues with dams that i have seen. In Mozambique for example the kariba an cahora basa dam are on the zambezi river. both dams are used for irrigation/water supply as well as hydro so the intention is to store water so dam managers try to fill them at any opportunity. there is a requirement to regulate downstream flow. this often means that the floods that would have been a seasonal event are caught in the dams and not experienced downstream. This results in people forgetting that the flood plain is a flood plain (it has never flooded in a person's lifetime) so they start building within the flood plain, then there is an el-nino event and the dam is full and big event hits and the dam does nothing to control it and suddenly the flood plain is flooded again and there are huge losses and losses of life

on a smaller scale detention ponds are dams designed to manage floods - basically flood mitigation dams