UK Government Allocates £15m to Natural Flood Management

The UK government announced £15m for natural flood management initiatives in the 2016 Autumn Statement.

Over five million UK properties are currently at risk of flooding, according to the Environment Agency.

To tell us more about what these methods are, NERC spoke to Professor Louise Bracken at Durham University, Dr Paul Quinn at Newcastle University and their colleagues from the Environment Agency - Michael Norbury and Alex Nicholson.

Traditional, large concrete and steel flood defences such as flood walls, flood gates and dams reduce flood risk where people live. But to meet the challenges of climate change and changes in land use, these may only ever be part of a solution. In some areas they might not be feasible at all.

As part of the range of measures we can use to lessen or delay flood risk to property downstream, natural flood management (NFM) initiatives can reduce the height of flood waters at their peak. They can also help improve water quality.

But rather than 'defending' towns where floodwater might hit, NFM is about holding water further upstream and in the landscape. These measures are built in numerous locations along the river, its catchment area and the surrounding landscape. This slows the release of water down and into the river, giving people more time to prepare and helping keep its highest level, or 'peak flow', manageable as it flows towards places where people live.

NFM measures can also help improve water quality and reduce erosion by protecting and restoring riverbanks.

Most measures can be built using locally-sourced, natural materials, which also helps to reduce their carbon footprint and helps wildlife habitats to thrive. NFM measures will need replacing more regularly than structures made of concrete or steel but using local materials, such as willow, also means that these measures are fairly low cost.

Slowing the flow

NFM is about all the measures that can slow a raindrop down as soon it falls from the sky and starts to travel across the land. Here, we outline just a few of them. In the countryside techniques include managing the land and in towns it can mean using permeable materials for paving.

There are a huge range of factors to take into account and each measure must be tailored to the landscape where it's being used. Traditional defences may be the best option in certain places but often a combination will be appropriate. Since 2004, 154 different NFM initiatives have been introduced in the UK. But given that these have mainly been used in smaller river areas, we don't yet have enough data to predict how effective they will be in any given catchment. To improve our understanding, NERC has launched a four-year, £4m programme to find out more about their suitability and effectiveness for a range of flood risk scenarios.

By Michael Norbury
Read moreat: NERC 

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Taxonomy

• Disaster Prevention
• Risk Assessment
• River Engineering
• Flood Modeling
• Water Management
• Hydrology
• Flood management
• River Engineering
• Flood