More about the growing need for flood-resistant building products:

If you wanted to design a more flood-resistant building, there is little data on the forces created by surging water in buildings. An Australian scientist, Richard Brown, took advantage of the recent floods there to instrument a building. Among key findings:

Debris carried along by the water acts like battering rams.
Speed of water flow can vary rapidly. Flows of 0.3 m per second – a rate at which an average person can still stand up – could change within 40 seconds 1.8 m per second, Richard says.
Smooth floors offered no resistance or interruption to the flow.

The investigator says "this sort of information will assist architects and designers to build safer buildings with railings, places of refuge or ways to slow water flow," We add that it can also benefit product manufacturers. More info.