We know that California is collapsing. Every issue has become a crisis—illegal aliens, crimes, failed schools, deficits, homelessness, transportation, cost of living. Now we have something they want us to worry about.
“The new Dasho-Shirzaei study had a narrower focus than the 2018 work, zeroing in on conditions along runways at the 15 airports. The radar data allowed the researchers to measure minute changes in the surface elevation of the airports’ runways. Those changes, in turn, point to areas most at risk of developing problems like cracks or bulges that could pose a danger to airliners when taking off or landing.
The new study confirmed SFO’s relatively rapid rate of subsidence. It also found that 98.3% of the airport’s 180 acres of runways are at low risk, while 0.7% were rated medium risk and 0.5% high risk. Dasho said in an email those numbers might be a little misleading.
“The high-risk area, though of relatively small percentage, if left unattended can render the whole runway unsafe and significantly increasing cost of maintenance,” he said.
Buy more worry beads—you live in California and they will claim everything is either a current crisis, or could be in the future. Any wonder we have a shortage of psychiatrists? Government is making us crazy.
SFO Is Sinking Faster Than Other Coastal Airports. What That Could Mean for Its Future
Dan Brekke, KQED, 12/12/23 https://www.kqed.org/liveblog/bay-area-transportation-news
New research to be presented this week is the latest to find that San Francisco International Airport is sinking fast — in fact, faster than any other coastal airport in the United States.
The findings are from two Virginia Tech researchers who will present at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco later this week.
The scientists, Oluwaseyi Dasho and Manoochehr Shirzaei, used radar data from a European Space Agency satellite to measure the rate of land subsidence at 15 coastal airports across the country.
Many airports around the world are, like SFO, built on wetlands or waterfronts, often on landfill. That makes them vulnerable to sinking.
Perhaps the most famous case in point is Kansai International Airport, which serves Japan’s third-largest city, Osaka. The facility was built offshore on a pair of artificial islands that engineers expected to take half a century to settle to a level comfortably above rising sea levels. Instead, the islands have sunk far more rapidly than predicted, and the facility has required heroic measures to slow the subsidence rate.
The situation is not nearly as dramatic at SFO.
Shirzaei co-authored research published in 2018 that, like the new study, used satellite-based radar to estimate parts of SFO are sinking at a rate close to 10 mm a year. At that rate, and with the prospect of rising sea levels, researchers said some SFO runways and taxiways would experience inundations by the end of this century.
The new Dasho-Shirzaei study had a narrower focus than the 2018 work, zeroing in on conditions along runways at the 15 airports. The radar data allowed the researchers to measure minute changes in the surface elevation of the airports’ runways. Those changes, in turn, point to areas most at risk of developing problems like cracks or bulges that could pose a danger to airliners when taking off or landing.
The new study confirmed SFO’s relatively rapid rate of subsidence. It also found that 98.3% of the airport’s 180 acres of runways are at low risk, while 0.7% were rated medium risk and 0.5% high risk. Dasho said in an email those numbers might be a little misleading.
“The high-risk area, though of relatively small percentage, if left unattended can render the whole runway unsafe and significantly increasing cost of maintenance,” he said.
He added the research could have much broader importance in assessing infrastructure health.
“The work demonstrates the application for satellite technology for monitoring the health of transport infrastructure in the face of climate change — bearing in mind that many transport infrastructure were built without a climate change resiliency plan,” he said.
At SFO, work has begun to prepare the airport for the effects of subsidence and sea-level rise. The airport has begun work on a nearly $600 million shoreline protection project that will involve building a 42-inch sea wall designed to be sufficient to hold back water levels forecast for the year 2018.
The project is currently under environmental review. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2025 and finish by 2035.
