After Miami Beach’s Sunset Harbour neighborhood experienced extreme foot-deep “sunny-day flooding” because of a king tide, city engineer Bruce Mowry and public-works director Eric Carpenter realized the city’s injection-well drainage system didn’t work.

As sea levels rise—compounding coastal problems such as erosion, storm surge and tidal flooding—engineers are changing the way they work, using adaptive design and new technologies to prepare for an uncertain future

When Seattle looked to rebuild its 100-year-old Elliott Bay seawall in the downtown, planners knew it had to be stronger and better, but it didn’t necessarily have to be taller.

Rising sea levels, as well as droughts and earthquakes, threaten the levees protecting the Sacramento-San Joaquin river delta, which supplies 25 million Californians with fresh water.

After Superstorm Sandy hit in 2012, science and news organization Climate Central identified the top 12 U.S. airports vulnerable to storm-surge flooding accelerated by sea-level rise.

By 2027, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts the road that keeps 16 % of the nation’s oil and gas production operational will flood so often it will have to be closed more than 30 days a year.

In a move that likely will be repeated by dozens of coastal communities over the next century, the Isle de Jean Charles band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians has decided to move from their home of more than 200 years before it erodes away.

For nearly a century, oceanside communities, particularly those along the Atlantic, have used beach nourishment to safeguard buildings and infrastructure from the erosive forces of waves and tidal action.

Flooding from rising sea levels is nothing new to South Carolina’s largest city. In the 1830s, the mayor offered a $100 gold medal to anyone who could come up with a solution. No one ever did.