They were once looked upon as once-a-century storms, but these storms now seem to be occurring once every-five-years or less. And world cities? They remain woefully unprepared, according to a recent article in WIRED.

However, civil engineers are now working on a variety of solutions to save cities from a torrent of water.

Last week’s submergence of New York City is a good example. When Hurricane Sandy flooded NYC and the region nine-years ago, the city spent US$20 million on climate-proofing. Unfortunately, after Hurricane Sandy it saw the problem coming from overflowing rivers and tidal surges. When the remains of Hurricane Ida hit last week, water came from above as intense rainfall, which the city was not prepared for.

Earlier this summer, Germany was hit by deadly floods caused by rainfall, as was northeast Turkey, bordering the Black Sea.

When the Sudan was hit by record Nile floods decades ago, there were popular songs written about how villagers fought back the rising waters. Similar floods have now happened for the last two years running, with no songs written.

After the failures of New Orlean’s levees and flood walls during 2005″ Hurricane Katrina – considered by many experts to be the worst engineering disaster in the history of the United States – the city’s flood control system underwent a massive overhaul. The small water damage New Orlean’s experienced during the recently powerful Hurricane Ida showed that proper planning and engineering can work.

In what are still untested methods, engineers are also looking at two main approaches under the geoengineering umbrella: carbon-dioxide removal (CDR) and solar radiation management (SRM).

CDR tackles the root cause of global warming by removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere — think carbon capture and storage. SRM, meanwhile, leaves greenhouse gases untouched, but offsets their impact by reflecting sunlight away from the earth.