[Cyberpunk Engineering Challenge] #2 Typhoon Abatement Platform

[Daigoro]

Tower for Control and Abatement of Typhoons, Cyclones or Hurricanes: T-CATCH

This is a follow on from this thread.

In a realistic to semi-rubbery cyberpunk setting, mainly TL9 but looking at advances in megastructure engineering, what would a typhoon abatement platform look like? (I'll settle on typhoon as the term of choice here, as the story is focussed on Asia-Pacific tropical storms.)

The main idea is to support a Die Hard-style adventure, so there are a few considerations to look at. I've got most of the main points settled, but I want to bounce some ideas off other heads to get some new perspective.

I won't post all of my thinking at once, otherwise it'll take me forever to get the OP together.

Outline
Japan, or a consortium of Asia-Pacific nations, builds an ocean-going platform thousands of metres high that can intercept and follow a typhoon. It is arrayed with a variety of experimental technologies that will hopefully enable it to abate or redirect a typhoon, recouping its cost by reducing the damage that major cities and nations currently suffer.

This system is called a T-CATCH (Tower for Control and Abatement of Typhoons, Cyclones or Hurricanes).

The problem is that, on its maiden voyage, it is hijacked by a team of ne'er-do-wells. What they didn’t count on are a plucky group of PCs who were in the wrong place at the wrong time…

Background Justification
The Northwest Pacific is the most active tropical cyclone region in the world, getting up to 30 storms a year. Due to global warming, this number, and their intensity, is increasing year by year, with an associated increase cost in civic, economic and human terms.

I couldn't find a good breakdown of overall annual costs for Japan or Asia, but Typhoon Hagibis (2019), which directly hit Tokyo, had an estimated damage of $15B, damaged or destroyed 90,000 buildings and killed 98 people. (For extra context, Katrina caused $250B damage and Harvey was evaluated at $125B.) Typhoon Jebi, the year before, caused $12.8B damage when it hit Osaka. These two alone amount to $27B, which is close to the annual $28B that American governments spend on hurricane cleanup.

Those are the sums which are hoped to be recouped from this project. In terms of modern investment in megascale projects then, China spent $22B on the Three Gorges Dam, while Kansai International Airport cost $29B. Comparing to really tall buildings, as another cost index, Burj Kalifa only cost $1.5B, while the proposed 3000m Ultima Tower is estimated to cost $150B.

As far as money goes then, I think it's in the realm of possibility to outlay a fairly hefty sum, say, in the hundreds of billions, to try to get this monster built.

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Anyway, that's enough to get started. I'll get more into engineering and abatement strategies in later posts. But with what I've given so far, what do people think? What would such a megastructure look like? How would it be built? How would it operate?