Bangkok Floods Thailand 2012

An interesting convergence of three events: (1) in autumn 2011 Bangkok, the capital city; logistics hub, financial center, political focus and spiritual heart of Thailand, is experiencing the worst floods in almost 60 years (2) we re-read a letter to Nature by a team of geologists I(http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v455/n7217/full/nature07373.html), including the esteemed Brian Atwater, detailing evidence of there having been four large tsunamis slamming into Thailand's western coast in the past - the 2004 tragedy was merely the latest (3) Susan Bartels and Michael vn Rooyen published a paper in Lancet detailing some of the specific medical causes of death after an earthquake http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(11)60887-8/abstract). What seems like centuries ago but was really just 1973 we were interested in what the effects of a dam built north of Bangkok would be. At the time, large dams were all the rage: they promised jobs, far fewer floods, hydroelectric power and possibly even cleaner water. What was less emphasized was the profound changes to the reservoir area; the increase of prime mosquito breeding areas (and a surge in malaria, dengue and other diseases); and the hydrological consequences of less water downstream. We were using very crude models but we estimated that the population of Thailand would double from 35 million in 1970 to 70 million in 2000. This was long before anyone had even heard of AIDS. Of even more concern was that our models suggested the Bangkok metropolitan area would grow from 3 million people in 1970 to 15 million in 2000. This kind of growth is very difficult to scale services infrastructure for education, medical care and transportation. In the particular case of Bangkok such growth would require a great deal of clean water, presumably from the north, and doing something with sewage disposal. We were aware that Bangkok had had some minor flood issues but specific data was hard to come by.