Alexandria City is falling. Nearly 300 buildings along Egyptian coastline come down crashing
Cairo may be the Capital of Egypt, but Alexandria happens to be the largest city in the country and now it is now falling down with nearly 300 buildings crumbling down like cookies within the last two decades.
Egypt is experiencing a dramatic surge in building collapses, directly linked to rising sea levels and seawater intrusion, according to the latest study in Earth’s Future.
The study documented more than 280 building collapses along the Northern Egyptian coastline (El Sahel El Shamali) in the past 20 years.
The Northern Egyptian Coast“ extends for about 1,050 Kilometers along the Mediterranean Sea.
“Historic coastal cities like Alexandria are gradually disappearing,” says Essam Heggy, a water scientist from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and lead author of the study.
Researchers found building collapses are closely linked to the severe erosion of the Mediterranean coastline, driven by sediment imbalances resulting from decades of inefficient landscape management and uncontrolled urban expansion.
Alexandria has a population of 6 million residents and counting.
This erosion, compounded by rising sea levels, has led to increased seawater intrusion and higher groundwater levels in coastal aquifers.
This steadily degrades ground stability, leading to accelerated corrosion in building foundations and ultimately, structural collapses.
To assess the damage, the team used a three-pronged approach.
First, they created a digital map to track the locations of collapsed buildings across six of the historical Alexandria’s districts.
The map includes detailed information about each structure, such as its location, size, construction materials, and foundation depth.
Data was gathered from government reports, private construction companies and site visits spanning from 2001 to 2021.
They also combined satellite images with historical maps from 1887, 1959, and 2001 to track the movement of the coastline and analyse how the shoreline has shifted inland over the past two decades, contributing to rising groundwater levels.
Finally, using satellite images from 1974 to 2021, the team identified a coastal area of high vulnerability with more than 7,000 buildings in Alexandria at risk, making it one of the most vulnerable urban regions in the Mediterranean to the effects of climate change.
Heggy says mitigation actions that combine landscape and nature-based solutions will be crucial for tackling the impacts of extreme events and sea level rise.
“In Alexandria, this involves measures such as establishing green belts along the coastline, creating coastal parks, and constructing natural barriers like dunes and vegetated areas,” says first author Sara Fouad, a landscape architect at the Technical University of Munich.
“These interventions aim to stabilize shorelines, reduce seawater intrusion, and protect infrastructure from the adverse effects of coastal erosion and sea-level rise.”