Prague Unveils Plans for High-Tech Flood Defense in City Center
The beautiful city of Prague is planning to enhance and upgrade its flood defense system along critical embankments in the historic heart of the city.
The intended improvements will impact the Masaryk, Smetana, Alšov, and Dvořák embankments, all situated along the Vltava River, which are essential components of the capital’s flood management efforts.
City council members have granted the contract for this project to Environmental Building, which secured the public tender with a winning bid of CZK 47.7 million (excluding VAT). According to Michal Hroza (TOP 09), the councilor overseeing infrastructure, construction is projected to commence later this year and is anticipated to take around 12 months to finish.
The objective is to enhance flood protection by 30 cm above the levels recorded during the 2002 floods. That catastrophic flood still serves as the standard for evaluating all contemporary water management systems in the city.
Some older protection measures, such as temporary sandbag barriers, will be replaced with mobile flood barriers, which provide greater flexibility and more robust protection. This modernization initiative comes in response to concerns raised during last year’s higher water levels, which revealed weaknesses in the existing flood defense infrastructure.
“Flood protection measures in the city center work effectively, but we cannot afford to be complacent. We’re upgrading older systems with more sophisticated components and completing sections that have relied solely on sandbags until now,” stated Michal Hroza.
Stainless Steel Structures and Concrete Walls
The first phase of the enhancement will involve tearing down existing stone landing thresholds and steel anchor plates, which will be substituted with modern stainless steel fixtures akin to those already implemented in other parts of the city.
Areas that formerly depended on sandbags will receive entirely new mobile barriers, equipped with all required structural elements. Furthermore, in the Na Františku area, a section of the embankment will be fortified with a concrete wall to heighten resilience against significant water levels.
