An open debate which challenges the science community to provide better evidence for designing flood management and protection measures in the face of climate change will be hosted by the University.
Flood Risk: Your Answers Questioned is a reverse Question Time, with panellists posing questions to an audience of academic colleagues who specialise in providing the evidence base for flood management strategies.
The panel, chaired by Lever Professor of Town and Regional Planning, Professor Peter Batey, includes Andrew Miller (MP for Ellesmere Port and Neston and Chair of Science and Technology Select Committee), Toby Willison (North West England Regional Director Environment Agency), Christine Darbyshire (Regeneration Policy Team, Liverpool City Council) and Professor Mike Ellis (Head of Climate Change Science, British Geological Society).
All are welcome to this event which takes place in the Foresight Centre on Tuesday 4 January 2011 at 7pm. Anyone wishing to attend should email Professor Andy Plater on gg07@liv.ac.uk
One obvious flood management strategy is to provide a reliable warning system. Our research programme with Portugal’s National Civil Engineering Laboratory provided one of the major elements in the Environment Agency’s tidal flood warning system for the English North-East coast from Berwick-upon-Tweed to the Humber Estuary .
Flood warning systems are primarily designed to save lives by allowing people to prepare for flooding and to alert the emergency services. A secondary purpose is to reduce the impacts of the flooding by providing time for valuable property to be moved to safer locations and for operating authorities to close flood gates and other control structures. Temporary measures can also be implemented, such as deploying sandbags in order to prevent water from entering properties. The North-East tidal flood warning system produces direct savings from reduced damage which amount to many millions of pounds annually. In addition, it reduces the more indirect costs of flooding, such as the health care expenditure resulting from the sickness and stress-related illnesses of those affected.
Given projections of sea level rise and the risk of extreme weather events, how long will it be before central London is at very serious risk of flooding, and could a long term engineering solution be devised?