"I saw a woman [on the news] crying in her flooded front

room. I thought, if anything, you're making it worse love…"

Jimmy Carr

About me...

Who lives in a house like this ?

http://floods.firetree.net

One in six houses in the UK

is at risk from flooding...

Environment Agency , June 2009

“For every £1 further we can spend, we would be able to save the country £6 in repair costs.”

Mark TinnionRegional Flood Risk Manager

Environment Agency

The most-threatenedregion is theSouth East

Environment Agency , June 2009

Global Flooding Events

Closer to home ?November 2010

http://www.geography.org.uk/resources/flooding

http://www.geography.org.uk/resources/2007floods/

http://geography.org.uk/resources/pakistanfloods/

Insurance...2013

Agreement between Government and Insurance companies to share the cost across all households in the UK is due to run out

5.2 million properties at risk from insuranceIf agreement doesn’t continue, policies could

rise by 4x or some properties would not be insurable...

The Barker Crossing: CockermouthImage by Mark Ollis

Family JacksonA

tale of four

generations

Celia and Alexy• Both are students at St

Bees School• Celia is in the Upper sixth

and takes Geography as an option

• Alexy is in Yr 11 and will be doing her GCSEs, she is considering Geography AS

Location• Both live in

Cockermouth• So do their parents

…(Understandably)

• And their grandparents …

• (and their parents…)

The shop

Grandfather Jack & Aunt Vanessa

Overflow• Upstream

the River Cocker had topped its banks

Escape• The

Gote Bridge slowed the flow cutting off the escape route

Main StreetWater starts to fill Main Street: people carry on regardless

Picture from “The Times” newspaper

At Vanessa’s house things were more serious – the garage

The car had floated up to the roof, crashed open the doors and headed off down river – it

was later found under a lorry

Image sourced by Liz Smith from ‘The Independent’s website

The livelihood • Passed from

generation to generation the antiques had been removed but replaced with mud, the whole shop smelt of paraffin.

The stock and office, destroyed

Photographs by Jean Wilson

Commentary by Celia Jackson

Text by Mark Ollis, geographer, St Bees

Pakistan Monsoon Floods 2010

“a slow motion tsunami”Ban Ki-Moon

Floods

http://www.shelterbox.org

Key Case StudyYorkshire Floods 2007

On Monday the 25th of June 2007, just after 6am, heavy rain started to fall

across Yorkshire...

12 hours later, it was still raining...

6 am

8.30 am

2.00 pm

6.00 pm

Uncalibrated rainfall data for 25th June 2007 (University of Hull)

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Time

rain

fall

inte

nsity

(m

m p

er h

our)

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

rain

fall

tota

l (m

m)

rainfall intensity

rainfall total

With thanks to Tom Coulthard

Rivers broke their banks: the Don, the Sheaf, the Rother, the Ryton, the

Hipper...

Was this mainly a fluvial flooding event

(from rivers)

or a pluvial event(from rain) ?

Some areas had a month’s rainfall in an

hour !

For information...

The wettest June on recordSource: Met Office

What caused it ?

• 25th of June: torrential rain fell over a large area: the equivalent of the contents of over 20 Olympic sized swimming pools every second fell on the city of Hull

• The 2 weeks before the 25th were very wet, and the water table was close to the ground surface (antecedent conditions)

20 - 30 000 feet high

Jet Stream: aircraft pilots use them for long haul flights...

‘Ribbon’ of wind – speeds of between 100 and 300 miles per hour

Form where cold polar air meets warm tropical air.

‘Steer’ depressions

What caused it ?

Polar Front Jet Stream

Source: Metcheck

Why so much rain ?

• More low pressure systems • Warm air, so greater

evaporation from ocean• As a result, a month’s worth of

rain fell in 24 hours in some parts of the country.

Jet Stream again...

Why was this a hazard ?

Something becomes a hazard when it does one or both of the following things:a) endangers life and damages property or the environmentb) threatens human societies and their welfare

Hazard Risk Equation

Hazard x Vulnerability

Risk = Capacity

http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/

Primary or Secondary ?

Primary: Immediate – as a direct consequence of the hazardSecondary: Follows later – an indirect (but connected) consequence of the hazard.

Nadine lived in this caravan for almost 2 years....

Google Earth file – pulls in videos and images...

Resilience

Notice anything ?

“They’re called flood plains because they flood...”

Philip EdenRoyal Meteorological Society

Flood Resilient Home

The resilient Kings Arms

Why are floods not natural hazards ?

Flickr user: Chris Malcolm

Environment Agency

Let’s design an app for them....

1. Check your insurance cover, and where your policy is...

There were 165 000 insurance claims after the floods.

2. Know how to turn off gas, electricity and water.

Flickr user: earthfromtheground, Amir. S

3. Prepare a flood kit of essential items: a ‘ready bag’• Important documents e.g. Passport, driving license and important phone numbers • Home and car keys • Toiletries and personal first aid kit • A wind-up or battery radio • Spare batteries • A torch or a candle and matches • Mobile phone • Cash and Credit cards • Spare clothes and blankets • Bottled water and any easy food, e.g. tinned food or biscuits.

4. Know who to contact and how

Flickr user: absolutwade

5. Think about what you can move now.

6. Think about what you would want to move to safety during a flood.Have a flood plan

Have a go yourselfhttp://floodsim.com...

For the future...• Flooding will inevitably happen again...• The effects of flooding can increasingly be mitigated

against by personal or local administrative intervention

• Recent flooding cannot be directly attributed to global warming

• The current round of spending cuts threatens investment in flood defences

• Flooding in the UK affects far fewer people than many floods in other parts of the world

http://livinggeography.blogspot.com

The 2007 floods in Hull

Prof. Tom Coulthard

Geography Department, University of Hull

Post 2001 (Humbercare)

Station Pre 2001 Post 2001

Saltend N/A 22

East Hull 26 10

West Hull 32 8

Bransholme 5.4 5.4

Total(m3s-1) 63.4 45.4

What caused the 25th June 2007 floods?

• Pumps and drains could not cope with volumes of water

• Too much water falling on the city for the network of drains, sewers and pumps to cope with

• Like a bath with the plug left in…• The water had no-where else to go

• Were the pumps and sewers correctly designed?

Flooding was largely at the ends of the sewer network

• Hull has the largest number of households and people affected by the summer floods for any one area in the UK.

• Over 8600 households were damaged by the June floods, home to over 20 000 people.

• • Of these, 6 300 were forced to

live in alternative accommodation with over 1400 people living in caravans.

The immediate impact

People:• Amazing local response• Social capital

• Schools as a social hub to the community: their closure can have a high social and economic cost.

• Parents were forced to take time off work, resulting in millions of pounds in lost earnings

• Can have a greater impact on some groups, for example lone parents.

Medium/long impacts: For Hull• Council targets and

infrastructure:• Cost > £100 million• Cost of £326 per resident.• Council largely self insured• Targets: Education, re-

cycling, crime, social indices• House prices?• Will it set Hull back from its

development plan?

Medium/long impacts for people:

• Temporary accommodation– Extended family - stresses– Split up homes– Caravans

• Health concerns– Mental - Physical

• Domestic issues• Schooling

• How long will the legacy last?

1. Multiple Agencies involved in design and operation of system

individual Landowners

2. No ‘Pluvial’ Flood Warning System

• EA Floodline only warns of River and Tidal flooding

• No predictive system to forecast for the impacts of ‘pluvial’ flooding

• Who is responsible for warning from these events?

“The Environment Agency provides flood warnings online 24 hours a day. From this page you can view warnings in force in each of our eight regions covering England and Wales. You can also search for your local area and its current warning status using the panel on the right. The information is updated every 15 minutes. “

3. Design limitations for urban drainage

• Design standards are only for a 1 in 30 year event (river defences 1 in 100, coastal 1 in 200!)

• 1 in 30 only suitable where there are ‘alternative watercourses’ (OFWAT)

• No back up of contingency in the design• Bransholme relies on ONE pumping station, it

failed

• Are we able to cope with more large storm events?

• Are our urban drainage systems designed for a previous climate, not our new one?

• Is 1 in 30 year levels of protection enough?

• What about climate change?

http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/thepittreview/interim_report.aspx

The Pitt Review

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