A levee, dike, dyke, embankment, floodbank, or stop bank is a structure used to keep the course of rivers from changing and to protect against flooding of the area adjoining the river or coast. It is usually earthen and often runs parallel to the course of a river in its floodplain or along low-lying coastlines.
The side of a levee in Sacramento, California
A reinforced embankment
Broken levee on the Sacramento River
A levee keeps high water on the Mississippi River from flooding Gretna, Louisiana, in March 2005.
Flood control methods are used to reduce or prevent the detrimental effects of flood waters. Flooding can be caused by a mix of both natural processes, such as extreme weather upstream, and human changes to waterbodies and runoff. Flood control methods can be either of the structural type and of the non-structural type. Structural methods hold back floodwaters physically, while non-structural methods do not. Building hard infrastructure to prevent flooding, such as flood walls, is effective at managing flooding. However, best practice within landscape engineering is more and more to rely on soft infrastructure and natural systems, such as marshes and flood plains, for handling the increase in water.
A weir was built on the Humber River (Ontario) to prevent a recurrence of a catastrophic flood.
Relationship between impervious surfaces and surface runoff
Emergency flood barrier
Flood protection for town of Ybbs along the river Donau