UKRI announces new funding to improve flood resilience via more detailed modeling

The Government’s UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) department has announced £1.2m of funding for a new project aiming to improve future flood adaptation measures in the UK. 

Over three years, the funding will support the running of computational flood models out to the year 2100, covering a much wider range of potential scenarios than is currently modeled. The results will be collated into a detailed assessment, which will be used to aid the construction of flood adaptation measures tailored to the specific needs of different locations across the UK. These measures will cover the construction of physical flood protection measures, in addition to early warning systems, risk informed land planning and nature-based solutions. 

The project, ‘Uncertainty Quantification for Flood Modelling’ is led by Professor Lindsay Beevers of the University of Edinburgh, who is in receipt of a £626k grant. Comprising three components in total, Fathom’s Chairman and Professor of Hydrology at the University of Bristol, Professor Paul Bates CBE FRS, will receive a £375k grant, while the remaining £222k grant is being led by Dr Steven Cole at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. 

Fathom, The Environment Agency, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA), Arup and Kaya Consulting are partners in the initiative.

The UK’s rising flood risks

Over six million people in the UK, plus a host of critical road, rail, electricity, health and other

infrastructure, are currently exposed to the risk of flooding. According to the research paper ‘A climate-conditioned catastrophe risk model for UK flooding’ published in 2023 by Bates et al., annual damage caused by flooding in the UK could increase by more than a fifth over the next century due to climate change, unless all international pledges to reduce carbon emissions are met. 

It is therefore of vital importance to ensure every pound invested in increasing resilience to flooding is spent wisely and effectively.

The role of flood models

Computer models play a key role in informing flood adaptation measures. By highlighting how rain and river flows work their way through urban and rural landscapes, they make it possible to evaluate the extent of potential flood inundation caused by extreme weather events.

However, these flood models require a lot of computing power and can be slow to run.

Due to time and cost constraints, a model can often only be run a few times – meaning there is limited scope to factor in all the uncertainties around the nature, extent and impact of a potential extreme weather event.

The project’s scope

Building on capabilities generated through decades of support from the EPSRC and NERC, the new research aims to eliminate these limitations. It will develop new algorithms enabling flood models to run much more quickly; making it practical and affordable to conduct hundreds of runs, taking into account multiple parameters and possibilities.

It will also integrate best-available climate change projections to further enhance models’ robustness. Additionally, it will dovetail ‘big picture’ regional-scale modeling with fine-scale local modeling, boosting understanding of risks which can differ widely across the country.

Project Lead Professor Lindsay Beevers, Established Chair in Environmental Engineering, School of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh, said:

“UKRI’s support has enabled us to develop an understanding of how to use models to address uncertainties inherent in both flood and drought prediction. This is crucial to modeling flooding events successfully, especially in view of both the multiplicity and the cascading nature of their direct and indirect impacts. We want to encourage a new approach and fresh mindset capable of meeting the challenges of flood adaptation across the UK in the decades ahead.”

Recent years have seen severe flooding affecting thousands of homes across the UK, in many cases forcing people to vacate their properties and face significant stress, expense and inconvenience as a result. 2024 has already seen parts of the UK experience significant flooding due to exceptionally heavy rainfall, with the Midlands especially badly hit.