The Buoyant Foundation - An alternative approach to flood protection

On June 4, 2013, we posted a video providing a general description of the "Buoyant Foundation" which provides an alternative approach to flood protection for existing homes in New Orleans and South Louisiana.  At that time we promised we would look into this innovative flood protection measure and get back to you on what we found.

Since then, we have reached out to Dr. Elizabeth C. English, PhD, the founder and director of the "Buoyant Foundation" to ascertain if this novel approach to flood protection might prove to be a viable mitigation measure for our community of Broad Channel.

Dr. Elizabeth C English, Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Waterloo in Ontario and formerly with the LSU Hurricane Center and Tulane School of Architecture, works on developing amphibious foundation systems as a flood mitigation strategy that supports the preservation of traditional housing forms and cultural practices. Her current focus is on Louisiana, the Canadian north and Bangladesh. She came to flood mitigation from a background of many years of research on wind effects on buildings.  She is the founder of the Buoyant Foundation Project in Louisiana and Ontario, and the organizer of the Building Resilience Workshops in New Orleans. Both projects promote strategies that work WITH water to enhance community resilience, and both encourage the use of redundant forms of flood mitigation to diffuse the concentration of risk that leads to catastrophe in the wake of the inevitable failure of a single-line-of-defense system. Dr English's experience in education, practice, teaching and research is in both the fields of Architecture and Civil Engineering. She holds degrees in Architecture and Urban Planning (BA), Civil Engineering (MS) and Architectural Theory (PhD), from Princeton University, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania, respectively.

Sophia Valakis-DeVirgilio of West 12th Road and Carol Fox of West 11th Road have expended a lot of time exploring this issue and have now arranged for Dr. English to visit Broad Channel this Friday (July 5th) to further discuss this issue with us and determine if our island community's infrastructure would be capable of sustaining this floating home concept.  We have also invited the Broad Channel Civic Association to attend this meeting as well.

Subsequent to our initial post regarding this issue on June 4th,we received a myriad of inquiries from Broad Channel  Rockaway, Belle Harbor, Breezy point and other area residents requesting additional information.  Many of us feel that this is a very innovative and exciting alternative approach to residential flood mitigation, in lieu of permanently raising a structure, and well worth looking into.

We will update you on the outcome of our meeting with Dr. English this Friday as soon as possible.

Buoyant Foundation Powerpoint by w12thrd