Future Urban Flood Risk Management

The Urban Flood Resilience Research Project enabled the coordinated planning, design, and operation of closely coupled urban water systems. This is necessary to achieve transformative change in urban flood risk and water management.

The research built on our previous Blue Green Infrastructure (BGI) developments. Our research focus was on engineering development across the drought-flood spectrum: planning for urban water not just during short duration flood events, but 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The use of BGI threatens to radically alter the water balance and hydrology of cities through changing infiltration, water flow paths and soil-groundwater status. There are no existing simulation models that adequately address this combination of long term hydrology and short term hydrodynamics. We combined our unique modelling capabilities for “natural” hydrology (such as the SHETRAN modelling system) with the unique CityCAT building, surface and pipe flow modelling system. Combining these models will enabled us to integrate these processes. This allowed representation and understanding of the complex processes and impacts of the complex and evolving urban fabric on the hydrology of cities, for the first time.