Kansai Airport in Japan is an engineering marvel but it's sinking and nobody can fix it. How can such a famous construction mega project go so badly wrong? Today we explore this floating airport and how engineers plan to rebuild this landmark to be fully operational again.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
► OTHER INTERESTING VIDEOS:
Why Nobody Can Fix This New York Skyscraper
• Why Nobody Can Fix Thi...
Is this the most flawed airport design in the world?
It is obvious that they miscalculated the height needed to ensure it would not subside or sink... keeping in mind erosion and natural subduction, and not sea-level rise. The only real issue now is to not abandon the airport but to incrementally rebuild over it; thereby, building it higher in sections where it is vitally needed most and gradually over other areas until it is high enough to last another 40 years. To do so, they need to sink under water cement deep enough as anchors to create pillars for support, then add stable topsoil filler to rise the foundation. I am pretty sure the whole project would cost a fraction of the previous build to rise and restabilize the foundation.
Very good! 😉👍
Germany's "new" airport takes that crown since it has never opened after more then almost 14 years of construction. it is 4 years ago since it was supposed to open.
It's man vs nature and costs. They could have over engineered the airport's height if they wanted to but that would cost a lot of $_$.
@@bailvik6390häh? Are you talking about Berlin Brandenburg Airport?
Just to be clear, this airport is NOT floating. It is built on man made islands.
something is amiss with the video author
True... If the airport could float this problem wouldn't exist.
It's tricky. If the airport sinks it means that that soil below liquified. If the soil is liquified then the airport is somehow floating, just not by design.
@@l3enjamin5in Still it is not floating. Floating means that the upwards force comes from pressure of displaced liquid. This airport is still relying on upwards force from mechanical support.
lies for likes. the heart of internet journalism.
If it was floating airport it would not sink
If its floating the airport would displace water to the weight and its relative volume of sea water.
Floating Objects Often Sink as pressure is applied on them
airport shaking at every wavse passing across
Boats float and sink. That airport is subsiding under its own weight.
Think of it as the set for the movie Waterworld. It sank several times during filming.
The solution is rather simple: Ask the Dutch to fix it. The Dutch are specialized in solving exactly this.
My thoughts exactly
You are right in that The Dutch know how to keep the water back, but this airport is in the Pacific. It's not the same, BUT maybe The Dutch(love them ngl) can do it. I think Italy should call them too...Miami Just freaking sink I hate that city with a burning passion
@@markanthony1004bruh what’s your problem with Miami. It’s a great city
I'll sure Japan has already consulted the Dutch and probably from the airport's beginning. They have are a lot of unknown variables to deal with and they will make it work out of necessity.
@@martentrudeau6948no, asia is a copycat continent, they can't innovate or create any new technology on their own. They will need western intelligence to fix this and it's simple to them, but japan is stubborn.
Maybe they should just build an airport at the site of the mountains they removed to get the rock to build this sinking mess.
Good one !!
My thought exactly
@@davidnevolo4402 I thought of the same thing.
From WC USA, The engineers of this airport should have talked to the engineers that built the levees around New Orleans, in the USA, oh wait maybe they did! That could be why both are sinking and will be reclaimed by water in a shorted time than both thought they would!!!
They already built it that means they can fix it. First, deconstruct all top buildings then strengthen the ground layers under sea. The matter is only how much it cost and how long it take. Also is it worth to fix ?
Yes, fixing it is absolutely totally worth it. It will be expensive for sure. The alternative would be to build another brand new airport over again from nothing, you don't want to go that route. I can compare this to migrating to Mars, instead of fixing all the problems that we have on Earth.
yes it will be worth it. as expensive as this island was to make, the cost of real-estate in Japan is so high and precious it would be more expensive to move it back inland.
During the built the construction committee decided the less than ideal compaction is enough . When engineering studies show further compaction to reduce sinking is needed . So here we are . Soon they would need a higher sea wall and one of the largest pumping facility .
This is no different than New Orleans, San Francisco, Manhattan, and many other coastal cities that were built and/or expanded atop organic material that decomposes naturally, leaving a void that causes the weighty material above to sink.
If japan can build Gundams. Japan can also fix an airport.
And they will.
Use the Gundams to hold and lift the airport?
OK, what exactly is a Gundam?
Thank you for this video.I never knew this even existed. Was good content, good speeds?Please keep it up with more interesting videos
Going to make for interesting pre-take off calculations, with the runways below sea level.
Don’t worry.they are just making it more higher every few years
They anticipated a sinking of 5.4 meters? That sounds extreme considering skyscrapers don't settle that much.
If they had built it on pillars set on bedrock and an I-beam substructure it would have worked. Or, if they had floated it on helium balloons from Walmart.
That's the big mistake they made not having the concrete base of the airport set on top of the piles instead of the fillers in between the airport base and the top of the pile structure. The filler is oozing out the sides and compacting between the piles.
I remember landing there shortly after it opened. Coming in for landing, looking out the window you feel like you're going to land in the ocean. You're so low over the water then at the last second there's the runway.
Next airport should be built on land, just level mountain tops, If they were able to fill..they can level!
I think it is impossible to simply lift the entire airport. You can only demolish it, heighten the island and rebuild the airport. And all has to be done in stages, because meanwhile the airport has to stay in use, I guess.
The airport buildings were built on jacks as they expected settlement. Just not as much as they're experiencing. So it's basically an infill/stabilization project and what is involved in stabilizing it... If it is even possible, which nobody is certain of.
ooncrete grout injection? Drive some holes around the perimeter and make a sort of "batub by grouting with hydraulic curing grout?
once that stabilizes everything you can refill the sinking bowl and just do that every decade or so until everything finally hit bedrock or equibrilium
They will build a replacement in the area nearest to the mainland and use the old islands as a buffer. Thats the only possible solution. Japan routinely replaces its buildings because of substantial and frequent earthquakes. They knew they would have to do this again someday.
Winner of the prestigious Sinking Airport award
It’s NOT a ‘floating’ airport👎👎
Underwater airport to the underwater world. 😂
👍👍 for your 👎👎
At the price of refreshments for everyone I'm surprised it wasn't cheaper to build a new airport on the spot.
But man I just don't get it. In a country prone to earthquakes and typhoon, in an era when we're experiencing rising sea levels, building an airport there was very short sighted
@@noobsfansub they knew that sea lvl will rise the problem was they miscalculated that the weight of the airport will increase the speed of sinking
I don’t know how someone can think of a project with these many problems to face and then complete it. We really have crazy people in this world who can think big and actually execute the project. Ball of steel is required to complete such a project.
No balls of brains is what was needed and they came up very short there.
Human "ingeniuty" always has a limit, especially when financial limit is one of those limits. Here the problem was assuming the underwater base would "fully compress", How??? It is not confined to a specific area so it wont "fully" compress. If small volumes of foamy water can have its way with beach sand, imagine underwater currents versus any type of sand.
For some odd reason, I'm thinking about Dubai's Palm Island Project all the way while watching this. Talking about Kasai, the ingenuity of Japanese engineering is remarkable here. Their method is simple yet works. They basically slide a piece of metal plate into the suspension column to keep the ground levelled.
lol! palm island is a disaster.
I flew to that airport last year, I went to visit my family in Hokkaido, then flew to Osaka in order to go to Kyoto via train.
WALLS AND PUMPS thats all i gotta say
Precisely.
Interesting to learn about this airport I have used a few times. Thanks.
2 things stick out: 1- why not build it on top of the mountain if they had all this work of leveling the mountain to dump on the water? 2- the main problem isn't the airport sinking but the water coming in, they only need to build a dam around it large enough that water doesn't flow into the airport. Also add some pumps around the dam just in case. I mean do that and the airport can sink another 5m below water level, as long as the airplanes have enough angle to land/take off that sinking shoudn't a be any problem
So if they know it will stop sinking at some point and it can be raised/adjusted with hydraulics, why not just build new and higher concrete walls around it to protect it from water?
Everybody knows it is not floating...
Why didn't they just build a huge keel underneath like a ship?
So why didn’t they make it a truly floating airport? Surely it would have been considerably cheaper and quicker to build.
It works, but has issues
It's doing its job. The typhoon event was likely higher than the designed level event and the continuous settlement was going to eventually stabilize but the beyond design level typhoon event caused more weight on the dredged material that caused additional settlement. It's a circular problem that the engineers did well to contain and continue to improvise to keep the airport functioning for the past 25 years. It's no easy task but creating more landmass was needed.
I save beach land daily. I inject slow curing resin that hardens into sandstone.
I remember watching all the specials on Discovery Channel detailing how this was being built back in the nineties and how groundbreaking the engineering was….until now I guess 😂
There’s a solution to most problems. to stop a man made island with all of the built in technology to compensate for the sinking. More levies only add weight adding to the problem. Steel driven in at an angle approximate 70 degree inwards to the center of the island. under the island from where the stone levies are The steel doesn’t need to be long enough to completely connect under the island. Just long enough to create an hourglass. When the clay used in construction sinks to the hourglass most restrictive point it will become a solid foundation. Yes steel will fail in those conditions and a better substitute is needed. This is just an outline please feel free to modify as needed.
their mistake was not making a artificial barrier reef.
Been sinking since day one. I remember them jacking building foundations to keep pace with the sinking ground. Not enough experience with artificial islands.
Potential repurposing of the facilities to a sea planes & flying boat port. Sunk costs?
They expected it would sink and has the solution for it, only that the sinking rate is faster so they have to work faster and cost more.
Coupled with the varying rates of sea level rise, this seems like it was KNOWN to be structurally unsound from the beginning. Perhaps a truly FLOATING SUBPLATFORM would be the only lasting solution. I lived in Nagasaki prefecture and Nagoya city and Japan is UNIQUE in that it refuses to build much on hillsides, unlike cities such as Los Angeles which makes for beautiful nature preserving landscapes, but wastes arable land for cities.
Turn it into a harbour for ships instead
Hey, New Orleans is below water level and sinking. Pump manufacturers make a mint.
"The project was first floated..." I saw what you did there!
If you think you can push back the ocean…try very hard to think again…if you can !!!
Raise the nearest mountain. Build a conveyor to send the dirt to the airport
Is the airport floating, or is it sinking? Kind of hard to have it both ways, yes?
Actually, the've stoped the sinking with 999 steel pilings. This has been so successful they're going to build another island,
It easy to fix fillup to 100m above the sea
After owning a sailboat, I now live in the mountains and I will never own anything exposed to seawater again. It ruins everything, rapidly.
just planning that alone, i would have thought they would put more than one entrance/exit to the island just in case something happens. also they should have figured some liquefaction would happen considering it's earthquake country.
⚔️As a follower of this fascinating airport, since it inception; I’m thrilled to see this latest up date. Maybe ~ 25 ago when it was sinking, but had the jacks on top of the pylons; I felt that could finally be at peace. Until it was reported that the jacking system was maxed out. I did arrive at speculative solution, when there was no online place available for me to comment on it. Resistance: The first was because the clay acts in a similar way that aquifers do. Second was the extra weight being added with more asphalt to keep the airfield above water. One solution is to relieve the area of extra weight. But what do we use to keep its present elevation stable? I thought of a flood plain that raised every rainy season that put water weigh on the top of a concrete sewer infrastructure project I graded. Civil Engineers use wood chips from a local mill, above the sand that’s on top of the pipe, then the excavated native soil was added to the top of the wood chips, to counter the extra seasonal water weight. So, where beneath the airfield do we put this replacement, or what else besides pneumatic balloon materials filled with ~ air, is used? There’s always under the pinning procedure, to replace, the removed materials. Removal of the surface in a cylinder shape like the manholes used for infrastructure pipes maintenance, dug to a allowable depth, then added the above suggestion for replacement; that is done continually throughout the surface, could relieve enough weight/ pressure. My idea has also come from a Star Trek series, that when crews were faces with an alien invasion force, that increased their offensive power each time, the crew increased their level of defences. Finally, when it was decided to back off the defensive tactics, then so, did the alien’s force. Good luck. Thanks for the update. 🛡️
It's not bloody floating
Tokyo is not a city. It is a prefecture or state with multiple cities. Whereas Oosaka is a city.
The land shortage is simple. Get Godzilla and his friend and enemies to pulverize the mountains. Turn them into sand or rubble and then build on top of that. Visualize this. Make it happen. Go, Go Godzilla!!
Why not drain the bay?
If they spin the earth faster water would be drawn to the equator reducing sea level around Japan. Problem solved. Too bad for the people at or near the Equator as they will all drown. LOL!
@@bobsmith3983 LOL, yes, spin the world faster and use centrifugal force to draw the water to the equator
"History show again amd again how nature points out the folly of man..."
Last I went to Japan some one month ago, I first landed at Kansai International Airport. To think that the airport I landed in was sinking...
I’ve used this airport and it’s amazing. Much better than the nightmare at narita.
i have a simple solution if anyone here can please notify japan. first, it is obvious that at some point it will stop sinking. however this will put it below sea level. it is important to note that typhoon or heavy rains must be removed constantly with pumps during the rains. here is my proposal. at the outer edge where the sea walls are located, you must pile up more dirt. this "island" will become like a volcano type of island. meaning no sea water surges can make it over the outer edge. the bridge may have to be raised at some point. the dirt piled high, will also hide the airport from neighboring neighbors. these new dirt walls must be fitted with trees and shrubs to help with erosion and wind damage. then in approximately 100 years, new layers of runways etc will raise it up even higher. since the buildings are able to be raised, the electrical connections will need to be extended and plumbing as well. essentially the mistakes made here were not raising the island high enough on the initial opening. this is evident by the island sinking more than predicted. when it comes to construction, you must think outside the box especially when this much money and resources are going into things. my opinion is a large hotel / resort / casino should be built on the island, one that is very heavy and must be supported ten fold of what the airport is. this mega resort will be self contained with solar and wind turbines, salt water desalination and completely solo like the wall going up in arab country. also crypto will only be used inside. PULSECHAIN coin $0.00006
O Those Crazy Japanese ..... PH....
Is the clay underneath acting the same way as someone stepping in mud? Hopefully someone suggested driving pipes outside the sea walls and leaving the inside unfilled to see if it bends from sinking.
The Dutch have been living below sea level since day 2...they know water control
It looks like they are going to have to bring in some engineers from the Netherlands.
Looking out of the side windows you must be like “this mofo Finna land in the sea”!
"Eventually, the sirport will stop sinking"...and be converted into a submarine base.
They can calculate the weight of our Sun, the calculation of the weight of this structure is easily within the ability of engineering students in their 2nd year.
Maintenance must be an absolute money pit. I bet the japanese people subsidizes that thing pretty hard.
They said I was daft for building an airport in the swamp
When they update (if the industry and transportion tech doesn't change in 30 years) They better come up with a fantastic pumping system and or the worlds largest hydraulic lifters...Unless it fully compresses and they build it up...the surface level will be below sea level....and scientist calculate a ocean rise of at least 12 inches (.30 m) in 30 yrs. time (if not faster)...with tides and weather changes thats a lot.
The title is misleading, it is not a floating structure. And no, it cannot be fixed. The more weight added to the structure, at the very bottom of the structure the soil will be pushed aside and it will simply sink further. It is doomed.
I flew into this airport in August 2000. I thought we were landing on an aircraft carrier! LOL!
They raised up my driveway pad with expanding foam. Give those guys a call. It was mcsomthing bros driveway services out of Jersey city.
Japan needs to build a new airport before the ocean rises to a depth that floods Kansai, making it impossible for planes to use the airport. They can't stop the ocean from rising, and they can't afford to keep spending billions of dollars trying to stop the inevitable drowning of the airport.
Gonna be the only airport below sea level.
They should just build an airport in the sky.
Floating? You can't possibly believe that airport is FLOATING!!
I would think if they filled those pipes with sand, they could remove the sand and use them to "mud-jack" the base of the airport. Surely they thought of that, right?
In effect, they painted themselves into a corner. What a costly conundrum!
"Insane nightlife" That exists where I live.
Floating airport? Come on!
Obviously pumping water deep below the airport won’t help, probably hurt. Sometimes this can help in areas where sinking is partly due to groundwater / petroleum has been pumped out over the years. Given possible liquefaction of the clay, it would have to below anyway.
1992+......Say Welcome to Today=Never saw it coming-? 1-Follow the idea+motive+ drivers. 2-Follow the engineering + securities obtained. 3-Follow the construction processes + Outsourcings. 4-Fact=Pockets either side of the fence NEVER lies EVER. 5-Fiollow the credit=Nothing concerted to "cash" instantly. 6-Follow the money trails. 7-Determine the money channelled. 8-Determine the RESOURCES wasted in the process. Now apply this to multiple similar projects since 1992 over the Globe. -Do you recognise a pattern, can you see it-?
actually they accounted for the sinking (settling and compression), but failed to build up high enough to deal with severe weather events? Should have taken more mountains and built up another hundred feet.
The USA would rather spend it's $$$ on WARS for profit than useful infrastructure projects like this awesome airport.
🤣I say to "hector" with the whole damn sinking mess...whatever a "hector" is 😛
"Hector" is the guy whom built the airport! 🤣
@@timmied8461 Lol !! poor Hector better find a bigass mountain to fill in that bigass sink hole 🤣
Shoulda built it better in the first place. Now they'll have to build another one and put it on top of the old one.
Apparently it is not a floating airport as the title suggests. As long as there is money they will find a way to save it.
what a waste of money and resources. Dubai is facing the same issue with so much waste to create to only be destroyed. all coastal cities in the world will be decimated from rising sea levels, flooding and earthquakes. a small rise in global sea levels has massive effects on flooding. 1 inch of rise can shift tides to several feet. People keep talking about the year 2100 but in reality its already happening now and the flooding is getting worse every year. Rapid escalation of global weather crisis and spending trillions of dollars holding water back isn't the answer. Holding water back is temporary for relocation and its a major financial burden waste of resources. Do your research on flooding the past 60 years because thats how long i have been watching the world change. Change is happening much much faster than they are saying. I see the devastation around the world already. You all need to relocate to 200 feet above sea level for future generations to be sustainable.
Wait, this is in a body of water, with a base of clay and sand and we’re surprised it’s sinking? It doesn’t take an engineering degree to figure out what’s wrong.
Thats a LOT of Hecters!
I wish this guy could pronounce Kansai correctly. Hint: It's not Kaaaahn-sai.
The hubris of humanity.
Waste of 10 minutes. This was a 2 minute video, it settled faster than expect no end in sight.
Its called contingency planning. They dont got it
Can someone fix my hay fever?
Pump expansion foam under the foundation...da!!
Hubris....it's why it was built. It too will be the reason it won't be able to be "saved."
This man made island has been sinking since the day it was built. Filling in artificial islands isn’t a good idea.