Project Overview
The research team will investigate how planning, design, operation and organisation of both existing and new urban water systems might be envisaged and transformed in order to deliver multiple benefits (including flood resilience) under flood, normal and drought conditions.
The research is divided into five work packages (WP) to deliver three key elements of the research:
- Engineering design to enhance service delivery
- Engineering development for resource use across the drought-flood spectrum
- Urban flood risk management at the heart of urban planning at multiple scales
Recent Publications
Thorne et al., (2020) Blue-Green Cities: Integrating urban flood risk management with green infrastructure. ICE Publishing (book).
O'Donnell, E., Thorne, C., Yeakley, J. and Chan, F. (2020) Sustainable Flood Risk and Stormwater Management in Blue-Green Cities; an Interdisciplinary Case Study in Portland, Oregon. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 56, 757-775.
Ferguson, C. and Fenner, R. (2020) The impact of Natural Flood Management on the performance of surface drainage systems: A case study in the Calder Valley. Journal of Hydrology 590, 125354.
Qi, Y., Chan, F.K.S., Thorne, C., O'Donnell, E., Quagliolo, C., Comino, E., Pezzoli, A., Li, L., Griffiths, J., Sang, Y. and Feng, M. (2020) Addressing Challenges of Urban Water Management in Chinese Sponge Cities via Nature-Based Solutions. Water 12, 2788.
Ferguson, C.R. and Fenner, R.A. (2020) The potential for natural flood management to maintain free discharge at urban drainage outfalls. Journal of Flood Risk Management, e12617.
Krivtsov V, Arthur S, Buckman J, Kraiphet A, Needham T, Gu W, Gogoi P, Thorne C. (2020) Characterisation of suspended and sedimented particulate matter in blue-green infrastructure ponds. Blue-Green Systems 2, 214-236.
Maskrey S, Vilcan T, O’Donnell E and Lamond J. (2020) Using Learning and Action Alliances to build capacity for local flood risk management. Environmental Science and Policy, 107, 198-205.
Various (2020). Philosophical Transactions A, Urban Flood Resilience special issue. http://bit.ly/TransA2168
O'Donnell E, and the Urban Flood Resilience team (2019). The blue-green path to urban flood resilience. Blue-Green Systems, 2(1), 28-45.
Johnson MF, Thorne CR, Castro JM, Kondolf GM, Mazzacano CS, Rood SB and Westbrook C (2019). Biomic river restoration: A new focus for river management. River Research and Applications, 1-10.
Lamond J and Everett G (2019). Sustainable Blue-Green Infrastructure: A social practice approach to understanding community preferences and stewardship. Landscape and Urban Planning 191, 103639.
Everett G and Lamond J. Green roofs perceptions: Newcastle, UK CBD owners/occupiers. Journal of Corporate Real Estate 21(2), 147-164.
Blue-Green Cities team (2019). Blue-green infrastructure - perspectives on planning, evaluation and collaboration CIRIA C780a.Eds: Krivtsov, V., Arthur, S., Allen, D., O'Donnell, E.
Blue-Green Cities team (2019). Blue-green infrastructure - perspectives on water quality benefits CIRIA C780b. 2019. Eds: Arthur, S., Krivtsov, V., Allen, D.
Research Themes
WP1 Resilience: investigating how blue-green and grey approaches can be optimally combined under different future scenarios
WP2: Resource: exploring how stormwater can be used in both individual buildings and in the urban environment.
WP3: Interoperability: investigating how flood risk resilience measures affect mutiple urban infrastructure systems
WP4: Interactions: exploring citizens' interactions with blue-green and grey infrastructure
WP5: Practice: testing and applying our research two case study cities: Newcastle (retrofit) and Ebbsfleet (new build)
Key Project Outputs 2019
Published March 2019 (PDF 4.2 MB)
Meet the Team
Urban Flood Resilience is a multi-disciplinary research project led by Colin Thorne and Emily O'Donnell at the 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’