Sustainable flood defence using sandbags

Of all natural disasters, flooding is considered the most damaging. Recently, climate change has significantly increased the severity of floods. Many parts of the world are experiencing catastrophic floods due to intense rainfalls or breaching of dams. This study is aimed at finding effective and sustainable ways to counter flooding and protect habitable regions. Sandbags have traditionally been used as a temporary flood barrier, but little knowledge about the filling material is available. This research was conducted to find the most effective and sustainable materials that are locally available. Mixes containing different proportions of sand and clay were tested in centrifuge and the newly designed oedometer-cum-permeameter. Scaled model sandbags were tested in centrifuge to evaluate the effectiveness of the filling material by simulating floods. Oedometer-cum-permeameter designed to validate the centrifuge results and to prove that with the rise in the vertical effective stress and the proportion of fines, the seepage rate decreases. The results suggest that locally available materials with an optimum amount of fines can be used as sandbags filling material and can be used for emergency flood protection. The use of locally available material saves transportation costs, making the use of sandbags for flood control a sustainable option.