Here is a photo of the soggy day.
How can the engineers prevent this? Here is the key graph. An economist might ask what is the cost of constructing this "reservoir" device? Singapore can clearly afford this and as more engineers around the world continue to work on urban flooding issues intellectual progress will take place. This is another example of ideas as public goods. The world's cities gain from the lessons that Singapore learns from preparing for the next flood. In this sense, the marginal cost of adaptation to climate change continues to decline. A pessimistic might ask; "what is the maximum sea level rise these new technical fixes can handle?" This is a fair question. A rational government that anticipates that it doesn't know how much sea level rise might happen would "over build" the sea wall to prepare for truly ugly cases.
Singapore is a "green city" and I predict that it will continue to thrive even in the face of climate change. How cities adapt to new challenges was the key focus of my 2010 Climatopolis book and my 2013 Environmental economics book.
