Urban Flood Resilience Research Project
The project aims to enable the coordinated planning, design and operation of closely coupled urban water systems necessary to achieve transformative change in urban flood risk and water management. The research will focus on three key themes, divided into five work packages (WP) for different parts of the research:
- Engineering design to enhance service delivery (WP1)
- Engineering development for resource use across the drought-flood spectrum (WP2 and WP3)
- Urban flood risk management at the heart of urban planning at multiple scales (WP4 and WP5)
The research team will investigate how planning, design, operation and organisation of both existing and new urban water systems (including flood risk management, waste/stormwater management and water security) must be re-envisaged and transformed to:
- ensure satisfactory service delivery under flood, normal and drought condition states
- enhance and extend the useful lives of ageing grey assets by supplementing and integrating them with multi-functional Blue-Green infrastructure and urban green spaces
Read more about our research overview and deliverables.
Meet the team
Urban Flood Resilience is a multi-disciplinary research project led by Colin Thorne and Emily O'Donnell, University of Nottingham.
Meet the Urban Flood Resilience team.
Case Study research
We will focus research on two case studies (see WP5):
- Newcastle (UK): to investigate how urban flood resilience can be achieved through retro-fit, in the context of urban renewal
- Ebbsfleet (UK) to investigate how urban flood resilience can be achieved in the context of new build in a ‘garden city’
Upcoming events and news
UK-China joint workshop on Urban Flooding and Sponge Cities. 3-5 July 2017, Shenzhen, China.
Seventh International Conference on Flood Management (ICFM7). 5-7 September 2017, Leeds, UK.
14th IWA/IAHR International Conference on Urban Drainage (ICUD 2017). 10-15 September 2017, Prague, Czech Republic.
Recent publications
Morgan M and Fenner R. Spatial evaluation of the multiple benefits of sustainable drainage systems. Proceedings of the ICE – Water Management, 2017. DOI:10.1680/jwama.16.00048.
Allen D, Haynes H, Arthur S. Contamination of Detained Sediment in Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems. Water, 2017, 9(5), 355 - 274. DOI: 10.3390/w9050355.
O’Donnell E, Woodhouse R, Thorne C. Evaluating the multiple benefits of a Newcastle surface water management scheme. Proceedings of the ICE – Water Management, 2017. DOI: 10.1680/jwama.16.00103.
O'Donnell E, Lamond J, Thorne C. Recognising barriers to implementation of Blue-Green infrastructure: a Newcastle case study. Urban Water Journal, 2017. DOI: 10.1080/1573062X.2017.1279190.
Hoang L, Fenner R, Skenderian M. A Conceptual Approach For Evaluating The Multiple Benefits Of Urban Flooding Management Practice. Journal of Flood Risk Management, 2016. DOI: 10.1111/jfr3.12267.
Ahilan S, Guan M, Sleigh A, Wright N, Chang H. The Influence of Floodplain Restoration on Flow and Sediment Dynamics in an Urban River. Journal of Flood Risk Management, 2016. DOI: 10.1111/jfr3.12251.