Flood barriers in germany

There something of the Escher in this viewpoint, because the road appears to be passing below the river (that on an aqueduct) yet the foreground shows mature trees up to their foliage in water. Whatever is the topography though, the walls are about to be over-topped.

Although climate-change will increase the risk of this happening, the river's behaviour would have been known since the area was first settled, so I am surprised those houses are so close to its level.

We've had many cases in the UK of developers building housing-estates on rivers' flood-plains, even using the riverside as a selling-point, with no-one apparently able or willing to stop them. Look at older towns along the river and see they and the roads were all sited above the long-known flood levels. So as the town expands the newer homes are put down on the flood-prone meadows, then after the first flood their residents demand that "They" do something about it. Not simply choose a home elsewhere in the first place.

Just as daft, some insurers use flood-risk maps based on arbitrary, set distances from river banks, not local heights. A friend told me of the trouble this gave him: he lives in a deep river valley so within the nominal flood area, but he had a heck of a problem telling the insurers that though close laterally to the river, his house is some 200 feet (nearly 70m) above it!

The weird thing here is that this is working. I used to live in a small village where there was mild flooding and the saying, 'water finds it's level' could not have been more appropriate. One of the affected houses had barriers erected by the owners and he did great job but the water got in. How?
Obviously the whole area was under 3 feet of water so once the sewerage system was full it backed up through peoples drains and toilets.

Wow, looks like it’s just about to run over.

I would be very nervous