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“Vienna’s flood defence system is designed to cope with a flood discharge of 14,000 cubic metres per second – that’s equivalent to a 5,000-year flood,” he says. A flood of that size last occurred in 1501, he adds. During the flood over the weekend, around 10,000 cubic metres per second flowed through Vienna’s waterways, “significantly below the system’s 14,000-cubic-metre capacity,” he adds. “Without this system, there would have been widespread flooding.”
One cornerstone of this flood defence system is an artificial island, the Danube Island, and a flood control channel, the New…