High-tech flood control around the world

Unfortunately, hope and prayer seem to have formed a bit too much of New Orleans' flood control system especially when compared to the high-tech barriers already in place in low-lying cities and countries around this steamy damp orb.
To be fair, many of these systems were themselves the result of similar flooding disasters. The New York Times does a good job of presenting several possible case studies for Nawlins and national officials to consider for future flood prevention — the Japanese have their superlevees, Londoners have their five-story tall moveable floodgates along the Thames, and Venetians are erecting 78 "gargantuan" floodgates which rest on the sea floor and will rise to block dangerous tidal surges. But the model the rest of the world looks to is the massive $8 billion system of defenses which has shortened The Netherland's coastline (a country twice the size of New Jersey) by more than 400 miles and took a quarter century to build. Seems there is something still to be learned from "Old Europe" after all.