Going with the flow. A story about living with water

Over the past 25 years the tropics, located along the equator, have expanded by as much as 500 kilometers north and south, evidence of climate change in action. The Equatorial line passes throughout 13 countries: Ec- uador, Colombia, Brazil, Sao Tome and Principe, Ga- bon, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, Maldives, Indonesia and Kiribati. These countries used to be some of the few with weathers that could host tropical rain forests. Many of these rainforests are actively being diminished causing immense ecological imbalance. Colombia is one of the South American countries characterized by such tropical weather expansion and within a series of serious reper- cussions have started coming to light. The Andes Mountain range reaches Colombia and its sloping lands extend throughout a big part of its territory bordering to both the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean coasts. Due to its geomorphological characteristics, the Colom- bian territory counts with a great deal of river mouths, aquifer reservoirs and headwaters. However, since the year 2010, the country has experienced the most intense rainfall seasons in the last fifty years. Most water bodies have overflown without any sort of control. The excessive precipitation has affected the majority of the territory in many ways, leaving deaths, injured people, missing peo- ple, and thousands of destroyed towns and villages. The increasing water levels of rivers and other water bodies, in some cases reaching up to 3-meter raises, have caused floods in urbanized and agriculture areas, leading to great losses for various settlements. The current situation can be observed and addressed with an urbanistic-architectural perspective. New alternative solutions in the matter of flood prevention strategies and sheltering solutions may be tested and applied in order to improve the living conditions of thousands of victims of the present rainfall disasters. The final goal is reaching the generation of new community weather-conscious behav- iours which may help prevent future possible losses. Such weather-conscious behaviours must include amphibian adaptability in order to give birth to sustainable floating village communities.