Research Proposal Flooding Urban

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Research Project Proposal Stacey Robinson May 2008 Title: The improvement of estimates of flood risk in the UK using historical data. Introduction Approximately one in every ten people lives in an area at risk from flooding in the UK. This represents a significant problem in the UK to the insurance companies insuring the properties and to the appropriate governmental bodies whose authority it is to protect these areas from flooding. Many of the problems have been accentuated by inappropriate siting of buildings and housing developments since the early 1960’s as space in large conurbations has become sparse. These problems have become more recognised in the UK since the early 1990’s as many large conurbations have suffered from severe flooding such as Perth in 1990 and 1993, York in 2000 and 2001 and the Severn catchment in 2000 (Carpenter, 2000). These have been very large floods on large rivers; this small selection isn’t representative of all flooding that has occurred in the UK but is a sample of the flooding on major rivers. Many of the smaller rivers and tributaries of these and other rivers have also recorded record flows (NERC, 10/2000). At present the flooding risk presented to a site is normally calculated by just that presented from instrumental flow records, which are often shorter than fifty years. This may result in lack of confidence in the representation of flows, especially if the period in which instrumental records have been taken is a flood ‘rich’ or ‘poor’ period (McEwen, 1990). The result is that the return frequency of events may be significantly under or over estimated. Research Aim To improve our knowledge of flood risk through the improvement of historical records and their use with non-continuous statistics. Research Objectives The objective of this thesis will be to examine variations in magnitude and flood return
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