Vote for Aviva Community Flood Relief
Project 16-1823
The flooding of low lying homes is a significant and unresolved problem for the UK, and we are hoping to fund an MSc bursary to investigate solutions. This Aviva Project 16-1823 seeks both to connect areas which have capacity to hold rainfall with those who lose out during extreme storm events, and to involve those who benefit from clean controlled rural water supply. Such connection can be tested advantageously by methodical analysis of predictive computer models – much like weather forecasting. Sufficient software tools and data are open and available. Please click the image above to help by voting for Aviva Community Funding.
Insurance and water-supply companies both gain from well managed rural water, and they have resources to innovate mechanisms to connect those who suffer loss with those who have capacity to control natural extremes. National institutions are charged with managing flood risk, and have a duty to ‘care-and-share’. However they are not obliged (and often fail) to find solutions.
Take for example Carlisle: in the decade since 2005 some £45 millions were spent on flood defences which did not work. During this period however, little or no attention was paid to what is now becoming known as flood alleviation by ‘Catchment Process’. In December 2015, 18 million cubic metres turned Carlisle into a massive pond and caused devastation for thousands of Cumbrian families. In upstream areas of this catchment, some 50 square kilometres of floodplain and 2000 square kilometres of countryside were potentially available for temporary detention/ponding to absorb this extreme rainfall – the question now is “WHERE COULD THESE CHAINS OF PONDS HAVE BEEN LOCATED ?”.
These images illustrate typical output of computer analysis.
The evolving Mid-Wales project of this submission seeks to bridge gaps between science, industry and government agencies with innovative models of physical and funding opportunity. Financial support from either the Insurance or Water-Supply sectors (or both) would put flesh on the bones of a current pro-bono study and fragile (CAP) Rural Development Programmes. A rigorous hydraulic fluvial model of the Upper Severn which mapped theoretical locations of opportunity for temporary flood storage – albeit, initially, with ‘no-constraints’ – would act as a catalyst for nationwide methodology.
Without the evidence that such low-cost local models would bring to the table, the innovation necessary to protect towns and villages built alongside natural arteries is less likely to emerge. In general terms it is, perhaps, easier for institutions to live with occasional bad headlines rather than engineer progressive long term solutions ?
So this submission (copied below) is for Aviva Insurance funding to create a wider evidence base for good decisions – community by community. If successful, we ourselves will augment the value of the MSc bursary. Thank you for your support. Please vote by ‘click+follow’ on the image below. (You may have to register with the Aviva-Community, but you can delete any profile created; just pull-down the menu of their ‘Contact-Aviva‘ page).
Catchment Process analysis of a Research Student, resident near Welshpool, Powys, of the 1000 sq km watershed upstream of the Severn-Vyrnwy confluence. Primary interest being the spatial targeting and (2D) numerical modelling of Attenuation Opportunity in rural catchments from a background of two technical degrees (Pembroke Cambridge Open Exhibition and BA Engineering first degree; Aberystwyth Fluvial Dynamics Masters second degree).
Acknowledgements – ‘ALFA’ courtesy EU/NERC – ATREPO (in-house)
ATREPO 