Flooding: is it all water under the bridge?

Predicting whether a flood will occur in the next few days is challenging. So how about predicting a flood months in advance?! Impossible? Not quite. Challenging? Definitely! Yet, the stakes are high, as this would give us more time to better prepare for these events and reduce their damage. During this talk, I will discuss how changes in and interactions between the atmosphere, oceans and on land can help us predict river levels months in advance.

We can't stop the rain, but we can influence how and where water is stored and moves through our natural and urban landscapes. How we use and manage land upstream can either increase or decrease the risk of flooding downstream. In this talk, we will explore how different trees, crops and soil management techniques could enhance the ability of large areas of land upstream to store water below ground; whilst also producing food, drinking water and supporting biodiversity. We will consider what we can all do to help, from small allotment to large country estate. We are all catchment managers.

How would you set about managing flooding? Dredge the river? Put up large flood defences? How effective would these be? A flood is water in the wrong place, well where ‘we’ deem is the wrong place. The problem is that when that ‘wrong place’ is someone’s lounge. Then it has serious negative consequences. It impacts their life, livelihood, health/welfare for years. Flooding seriously damages the quality of life for those it impacts. So, is a single action; a wall, dredging the river the solution or a political ploy to damped down (pun intended) the furore that comes with a large flood event?