Flood MEMORY
Multi-Event Modelling of Risk and Recovery
Project contact: Jingming Hou
The project examines critical flood scenarios caused by sequences or clusters of extreme weather events striking vulnerable systems such as:
- Flood defences
- Urban areas
- Communities
- Businesses
The project will analyse and simulate scenarios where a second flood may strike, before systems have fully recovered from the previous event. For example before river and coastal defences have been reinstated or when householders and small businesses are still in a vulnerable condition. We use observed records of storms to understand how clustering may obscure or even exacerbate climate induced changes.
Possible applications include:
- Assessing the behaviour of coasts (beaches, dunes and engineered defences) and rivers during storms
- Understanding the effect of previous storms and floods on moving sediment (ie. shingle, sand and river bed material)
- Understanding the potential weakening of these systems prior to a second event
- Assessing the impact of clustered storms on climate induced changes
We will use observed records of storms to understand how clustering may obscure or even exacerbate any climate induced changes. This is crucial for designing flood defence schemes now, and will also enable operation for decades into the future. Current methods of estimating risk in a stationary climate do not fully account for the observed clustering of flood events or possible changes in variability.
We hope that our findings will lead to enhanced flood resilience and better allocation of resources for protection and recovery. Ultimately the processes we are developing could be used worldwide.
