26 February 2021
Flooding experts at the 色狗导航 are part of a new 拢3.7m project which aims to revolutionise our understanding of global flood risk.
Working as part of a consortium of nine UK universities, as well as multiple national and international organisations, the team has been successful in winning major grant funding from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).
The new project, titled EvoFlood, aims to create the next generation Global Flood Model 鈥� a state-of-the-art computer model used to simulate the probability of flooding across the Earth. 色狗导航 scientists will provide global flood time series by analysing model data from the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts.
Professor Hannah Cloke, a hydrologist at the 色狗导航 who is working with the team, said: 鈥淭here are a lot of unanswered questions regarding rivers and when they will flood. The new methods we will develop in the EvoFlood project will increase our understanding of the influence of river shape as well as climate change on flooding, as well as how this is likely to change in future.
鈥淔looding turns people鈥檚 lives upside down. Improving flooding predictions will enable action to limit the destruction they cause.鈥�
Globally, nearly one billion people are potentially exposed to the risk of flooding, with around 300 million on average being impacted by floods in any given year.
Faced with this vast societal challenge, reliable tools are urgently needed to predict how flood hazard and exposure will change in the years and decades to come.
Existing state-of-the-art Global Flood Models (GFMs) are used to simulate the probability of flooding across the Earth, but they do not represent the way river channels and floodplains change over time.
If rivers become shallower or wider, then their capacity to contain floods changes over time. Existing models that neglect this process therefore make poor predictions over the long term. It is this limitation that the EvoFlood team will tackle.
Using the latest advances in using cell phone technology to track shifting populations, the new models will also provide a greater understanding of how communities are exposed 鈥� and respond 鈥� to flood events.
The EvoFlood project will look to answer a number of key questions, including:
The EvoFlood team, led by the Universities of Hull and Southampton, is partnering with a wide range of key stakeholders to ensure that the results will make a positive societal impact.
Sue Manson, Principal Scientist at Environment Agency, said: 鈥淭he Environment Agency is pleased to be a Project Partner supporting the EvoFlood Project, which aims to develop a new generation of global scale flood models.
鈥淲e support the aims of the research programme which is committed to developing practical learning that will benefit current and future generations and I look forward to working with the project team.鈥�
The project will also utilise the state-of-the-art Total Environmental Simulator at Hull which will be used to experimentally model river dynamics.
Follow the progress of the EvoFlood project on Twitter at
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