Delivering and evaluating multiple flood risk benefits

The aim of this project is to develop new strategies for managing urban flood risk as part of wider, integrated urban planning.

Project Funder: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)

Lead Organisation: University of Nottingham

Project Duration: Three years

Project team/collaborators

  • Dr J Lamond, UWE Bristol
  • Professor C Thorne, Project Leader, University of Nottingham
  • Dr D Guan, University of Leeds
  • Dr R Fenner, University of Cambridge
  • Dr H Haynes, Heriot-Watt University
  • Professor C Kilsby, Newcastle University
  • Professor L Smith, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
  • Professor N Wright, Leeds University
  • Professor S White, Cranfield University, Bedford

Project aims

To develop new strategies for managing urban flood risk as part of wider, integrated urban planning.

Project summary

New strategies for managing urban flood risk are required, necessitating radical changes in the ways cities are managed, planned and developed. Previous research has identified multiple options and measures for future urban flood risk management that align with more general targets for water centric, sustainable communities. However, it remains unclear how these options and measures can be:

  • delivered in practice
  • comprehensively evaluated in terms of their benefits and costs.

Recognising this, the project proposed here will develop novel ways of driving new, resilient urban forms and fabrics through delivering measures to manage flood events sustainably while enhancing urban life; providing scope for radical solutions under new build; and realising possibilities for improving existing performance through retrofit and urban renewal.

Project outcomes

The project will:

  • Co-produce knowledge by putting competent authorities, businesses and communities at the centre research and establishing feedback pathways between them and the FRMmodellers, planners and decision makers.
  • Develop surface/sub-surface hydrodynamic models linked to semi-quantitative.
  • Assessments of sediment/debris dynamics and habitats of current flood risk.
  • Identify and assess candidate options for adaptive strategies combining hard and soft responses to urban flood risk.
  • Identify and understand the behavioural responses of individual and institutional stakeholders to the candidate options for FRM.
  • Develop rules to represent these behaviours and employ agent-based modelling to simulate the responses of citizens to FRM options.
  • Synthesise existing and novel performance measures to identify 'value added' at a range of scales and under flood/non-flood conditions, in an ensemble of contrasting, possible flood futures.