Dredred said:
I've never heard of houseboats as protection against flood. Floating houses have been designed for that purpose though, but browsing the designs at the amphibian living site, I don't really see any countermeasures against great masses of debris-filled water rushing along at great speeds.
Unfortunately, the types of floating construction popular in The Netherlands, or even in Sausalito, are probably not well-suited to areas prone to more violent weather conditions. As a matter of fact, if you explore the coastal rivers and estuaries of Louisiana and Mississippi, you will find that floating housing is not at all uncommon. For the most part, however, these structures are small and, at least theoretically, mobile, so that when a storm threatens they can be relocated farther inland.
Interestingly, I seem to recall that when the gambling industry first began to establish itself in Mississippi, that state's laws that accomodated "riverboat gambling," and prohibited land-based casinos, led to some rather remarkable innovations. Large buildings were floated in man-made lagoons, for no purpose beyond compliance with the law. Ironically, this strange situation was sometimes presented as a
selling point to coastal communities, who were understandably concerned about the security of such large components of their economic infrastructure. I know that many in those communities somehow came to believe that the
enormous casino "barges" could simply be floated upriver to safe ports inland.
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