About our Project

FloodMEMORY is investigating the effects of temporal clustering of flood events on natural, built and socio-economic systems in order to identify critical vulnerabilities, better allocate resources for protection and recovery, and improve flood resilience.          

  • Floods do not occur at regular intervals – they cluster in time
  • The vulnerability of receptors and performance of pathways both have memory
  • If repeated shocks occur within the memory period then increased damage may occur

This project seeks to:

  • Identify and quantify this underestimated risk
  • Increase resilience by pre- and post-event actions

Outcomes

  • New combination of climate, “super-statistics” and flood system models, including “memory”, all within a novel continuous/event simulation framework to inform socio-economic analyses
  • Information and strategies for dealing with “multiple shocks” which may be “blindspots” in UK flood risk
  • “Myth busting” of return periods and non-stationarity: replacement of inadequate conventional analyses for use in a changing climate