From an unusual source - Phys.org - a Science and Technology web news outlet:
Japan opts for massive, costly sea wall to fend off tsunamis
Four years after a towering tsunami ravaged much of Japan's northeastern coast, efforts to fend off future disasters are focusing on a nearly 400-kilometer (250-mile) chain of cement sea walls, at places nearly five stories high.
Opponents of the 820 billion yen ($6.8 billion) plan argue that the massive concrete barriers will damage marine ecology and scenery, hinder vital fisheries and actually do little to protect residents who are mostly supposed to relocate to higher ground.
And the politics behind this?
Pouring concrete for public works is a staple strategy for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its backers in big business and construction, and local officials tend to go along with such plans.
The paradox of such projects, experts say, is that while they may reduce some damage, they can foster complacency. That can be a grave risk along coastlines vulnerable to tsunamis, storm surges and other natural disasters. At least some of the 18,500 people who died or went missing in the 2011 disasters failed to heed warnings to escape in time.
Emphasis mine - two words I love to hear in conjunction - Liberal and Democrat
There is a huge difference between corporatism (or crony capitalism) and true capitalism. Obama's administration is all about the corporatism while agitating the proles against the dreaded 1%'ers. It keeps them busy - otherwise, they might actually have the time to read into these matters - that would be messy and we can't have that. Progressivism - ideas so good they have to be mandetory...
Someone had an even better idea - Tsuneaki Iguchi was mayor of Iwanuma in 2011:
The city repaired the broken sea walls but doesn't plan to make them any taller. Instead, Iguchi was one of the first local officials to back a plan championed by former Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa to plant mixed forests along the coasts on tall mounds of soil or rubble, to help create a living "green wall" that would persist long after the concrete of the bigger, man-made structures has crumbled.
Absolutely - but there is also this:
While the lack of basic infrastructure can be catastrophic in developing countries, too heavy a reliance on such safeguards can lead communities to be too complacent at times, says Margareta Wahlstrom, head of the U.N.'s Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.
"There's a bit of an overbelief in technology as a solution, even though everything we have learned demonstrates that people's own insights and instincts are really what makes a difference, and technology in fact makes us a bit more vulnerable," Wahlstrom said in an interview ahead of a recent conference in Sendai convened to draft a new framework for reducing disaster risks.
In the steelmaking town of Kamaishi, more than 1,000 people died in the 2011 tsunami, but most school students fled to safety zones immediately after the earthquake, thanks to training by a civil engineering professor, Toshitaka Katada.
Proper training and having an established escape route. This stuff is not rocket science and throwing a large government project at the problem will, as the article said, cause people to become complacent.
