The $100BN Plan to Save Tokyo

inside the sh from this oh wow this is amazing this huge huge space carved out in the earth people created this and they're doing it for a project that's going to change the lives and impact millions of people best industry in the [Music] world Welcome to Tokyo [Music] this is one of the most incredible cities on Earth the bullet train was shooting through here back from other countries were still using steam locomotives this place was an electronic Powerhouse when Steve Jobs was still working out of his garage and it kind of knows a thing or two about building big this place is so big so sprawling so huge so well organized that it's like you're in some kind of bubble you feel like the place is indestructible but look a little closer and you realize there's something very different about Tokyo we have breaking news 7. 1 magnitude wind flood Landslide warning this city is constantly on the brink of disaster earthquake magnitude 5. 7 earthquake was felt throughout Tokyo volcano Fuji is volcanic ash could the Tokyo area floods the disaster is far from over on the Tokyo area this is that really shouldn't be here but it is because Engineers have developed some of the most extensive and advanced counter measures anywhere in the world but it's not enough the number of threats Tokyo faces and the Damage those threats could cause is only getting worse a quarter of Japan's population now lives in the greater Tokyo area and the City Center accounts for more than 20% of this country's GDP if disaster struck now it would just be bad for Tokyo it would have a KnockOn effect for this entire country and even the world this place this city really matters but Tokyo is not exactly a city that does things by half measures so when it came to protecting itself from Annihilation it decided to go big by building one of the biggest Civic defense projects in history I cannot describe the feeling of coming down those stairs this is amazing how much water are they expecting to flow through here this is a machine to simulate earthquake in the laboratory I am currently five stories beneath the streets of Tokyo the goal is to achieve nothing less than Total Protection from everything the world can throw at it for an entire Century this is the1 100 billion plan to save Tokyo [Music] I'm so excited for this on my way to see one of the most iconic buildings in Tokyo the Tokyo Sky street it's incredible it's complet in 2012 the first thing you notice is it's covered in this amazing ltis structure and that's designed to help it withand A magnitude 7 [Music] [Music] earthquake now it's soon when you get up high like this that you get a sheer sense of the scale of Tokyo it spreads out for miles in every direction but what you also realize when you come up high is how flat the city is you can sort of see down there through the clouds if the weather was [Music] better this is a really big flat area now because Japan is covered in mountains cities tend to get constructed on big large flat planes like this but that also makes them sitting ducks so pretty much every natural disaster you can think of this is the Pacific Ring of Fire a 40,000 km text IC belt it was this that forced Japan out of the sea in the first place but also left it studded with volcanoes 111 of which are still active today and while you only need two plates to grind together to create some seismic activity Japan lies across four which means this one country is struck by 18% of all the world's earthquakes and as if all that wasn't enough thousands of kilometers of ocean to the South leaves It Wide Open to typhoons and tsunamis roll falling in from the Pacific throughout its history Tokyo has been quite literally raised to the ground numerous times but now with 40 million people living here that simply can't happen again which is why in December 2022 the city's government hatched a plan the Tokyo resilience project okay now you're going to have to keep up because this is by far the biggest infrastructure project we've ever cover launched back in December 22 it's going to take 18 years to fully complete and cost 17 trillion yen which is around $ 109 billion US this really isn't the case of a new Floodgate here or a bit of earthquake proofing there it's a meticulously planned projects to protect every part of this city from disaster there's no structure too big no detail too small what does that look like well it means developing soft infrastructure like establishing evacuation routes and improving response times but also building some truly epic infrastructure like tunnels massive tunnels or widening Rivers 324 km of rivers there's so much involved because this isn't just about protecting Tokyo from one threat like a tsunami the trp has identified no fewer than five threats that could bring this city to its knees it might be national symbol but Mount Fuji also happens to be an active volcano that could blow any moment but even if it Smothers downtown Tokyo and Nash the city is going to be cleaned up and running again in no time thanks to meticulously planned clearance routes for those living on nearby Islands new evacuation points are being established to whisk residents away to safety on specially chartered ships [Music] we all remember the pandemic now in a place as D populated as Tokyo any kind of disease outbreak is taken incredibly seriously and one of the measures the city is now taking to try and prevent against that is the creation of more than 2 km of new parks extensive cycling routes are being created as well as Riverside walkways to give people an alternative to crowded public transport don't you hate it when you can't get a signal well now imagine the disaster's struck the phones are down and there's a blackout well come 2040 that just won't happen here because the city's building a new power and Communications grid that's going to ensure that Tokyo never loses connectivity and never experiences a power blackout that means reinforcing undersea cables building new satellite capabilities for the city and providing cloud storage businesses so they're always connected and that's just scratching the surface on the measures being taken to protect the city from three potentially devastating threats but all of that pales into comparison next to the last two Mega threats facing this city now before we go any further if the scale and complexity of Mammoth civil engineering projects is difficult to comprehend then don't worry because today's video sponsor innate has your back if you're working on a complex projects or planning to you could join Over 850 companies around the world which use innate suet of applications to keep things on track the needs of capital construction projects change constantly which is why inates modular software design means you can build up the functionality in your management system as and when you need it innate offers unmatched Data Insights enabling you to connect workflows across all your processes creating a single unified dashboard that gives you the functionality you can rely on to make informed decisions and to reduce risk in your business strategy most of all people trust inate because knowledge of the construction industry runs throughout the team inate is built by the construction industry for the construction industry so you can be confident you'll get the kind of informed T support your project needs to find out more about how innate can transform your project management click the link below [Music] I've come to Ned which is Japan's national Research Institute for environmental hazards and disasters I'm here to see all kinds of fascinating experiments but this is also the site where they have the early monitoring system for earthquakes called molas set up in the aftermath of the 1995 cor by earthquake this is a nationwide observation Network for earthquakes tsunamis and volcano seismic activity is monitored in real time using a network of 2,000 siiz monitors positioned right across Japan and the surrounding ocean floor when a disaster strikes it's going to be detected here first the main control room for molas is so secret and so secure that we're not actually allowed inside it but what you can see here on this map this representation is where these led dots are just how extensive that network of seismometers sensus is this is actually slightly out of date there are now more on the land and more in the waters around Japan as well and what stands out to you is this this plane here which I mentioned ear that big flat plane where Tokyo has grown up and been established if you look just south of Tokyo out into the sea you see there's a collection of islands two of these islands isur rushima and makak have erupted seven times in the last 100 years and works underway to establish a permanent evacuation infrastructure for when it happens [Music] again volcanoes are going to be around forever they're kind of a fact of life when living on planet Earth and they're chaotic they're difficult to predict there's one other danger which is much more predictable which has researchers very worried because the threat of it is only getting worse it might not seem like it from the endless expanse of concrete but Tokyo is a city shaped by water it's part of the reason the capital was moved here from Kyoto more than a 100 Rivers and canals flow through here with the city dominated by the enormous spiraling moates around the Imperial Palace but like so much else here what actually helped this city to thrive is also its Achilles heel as massive amounts of rain continue to drench Tokyo millions of people have been ordered to evacuate at least four people have died and dozens more hurt flooding is a critical threat to Tokyo 124 square km a fifth of central Tokyo lies below sea level so the trp is not taking any chances seaw walls are being raised in case of a 60 cm sea level rise by 2100 that's more than twice as much that they've risen since 18 but that's not all Tokyo faces thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean to the South and the current from that brings a steady stream of typhoons that dumps torrential rain on the city now that's nothing new but because of the urban heat island effects and climate change Tokyo's climate is becoming increasingly subtropical that means storms are getting more frequent and more severe [Music] over the last 40 years the amounts of heavy downfalls have almost doubled in [Music] [Music] Japan flooding was a daily part of life life in Tokyo and it was only getting worse in 1992 the city's government embarked on an extraordinary project in response to this challenge an underground system made up of five silos which collect flood water from nearby rivers and channel it down a 6.

5 km tunnel into this huge Hall I'm currently standing in this concrete Cathedral around me this is the metropolitan area outter underground discharge Channel or Gans for [Music] shorts is a water tank it is an enormous space 25 M High it sit 50 m beneath the city streets 177 M long and 78 M wide this place cost $2 billion US and took 17 years to build now it's capable of pumping out 200 tons of water a second I cannot describe the feeling of coming down those stairs into this space huge columns the stonework is a remarkable space and astonishing feat of engineering [Music] now while the scale of this place might be mindboggling here's the thing the Tokyo resilience project is working on doubling the capacity of this system W look at the size of this [Music] [Music] so I am currently 50 M below ground inside what is a new water diversion Channel and this the scale of this thing is hard to get your head around like the amount of water that could flow through here is is mindblowing this space is 12. 4 M wide it runs for 5. 4 km or at least it will do when they finish building it and it's going to connect up to two other tunnels to create a network that's 13 km long the biggest of its kind anywhere in Japan and it takes some serious engineering to carve out a tunnel of this size to dig this Channel engineers constructed an enormous TBM weighing in at a massive 2,800 tons and this is what that tunnel boaring machine looks like this is the amazing piece of kit that has made this huge tunnel possible stuff ahead of me up here is the massive cutting head that's pushing forward through the soil 12.

5 M wide rotating round dig out this huge hole you can see here these massive segments these are being put in to help line the toel wall this amazing machine you can see just up there lifts these segments up puts them into the newly formed tunnel to form a complete ring and these hydraulic jacks push off that last ring to push the cussing head forwards to build the next bit tunnel another ring push forward another ring push forward all that the 6 km what blows me way when you're walking down it is the scale how much water are they expecting to flow through here but tunneling through the Earth isn't as easy as lifting tunnel pieces into place to keep the Earth on the other side stable the TBM uses a water mixture known as slurry to balance the pressure of the excavated soil [Music] [Music] so what are these two pipes what do they do but it's not just the Earth that this TBM has got to contend with the cutter face is equipped with carbide cutter bits that are 48 times harder than a conventional TBM that's to enable it to break through into the connecting tunnels something that's never been attempted before [Music] during a storm this Mega tunnel is going to prevent flooding by siphoning off up to 1. 4 million Cube meters of rain water from Rivers across West Tokyo as water levels across the city subside the water in here then gets discharged back into the river and flows safely out to sea along with Gans this is part of a vast network of 28 regulating reservoirs across Tokyo seven more facilities like that are being constructed to bring the capacity of the network up to 100 mm of rain an hour in other words every hour this network could pump out more rain than London gets in 2 months and believe me it rains in London so why are such big tunnels like this necessary and What would life be like in Tokyo if this wasn't here what would [Music] happen for [Music] [Music] just before midday on Saturday the 1st of September 1923 a magnitude 7. 9 earthquake struck an area 50 km southeast of Tokyo over 142,000 people died and nearly 2 million people were made homeless in the fires that followed 33,000 square m of Tokyo were reduced to Ash it was the single greatest natural disaster ever to hit Tokyo and as is the way with natural disasters there's nothing stopping something like that from happening again in 1995 the city of Corb was devastated by a 6.