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• W4236037975 abstract "I write this editorial, in January 2016, as Britain recovers from another series of damaging floods. Unprecedented amounts of rainfall hit northern England and Scotland in December and January. December 2015 was the wettest month on record in Britain (in a series of rainfall records dating back to 1910). A new record of 341 mm of rainfall in a 24-h period was set at the Honister Pass in Cumbria; comparison with statistical records suggests that could be considered to be a one in 1300 year event. That broke the record set in 2009 of 316 mm at Seathwaite, also in Cumbria. The city of Carlisle in Cumbria had already suffered devastating flood damage in 2005. Whilst we must be cautious about reading too much into a sequence of extreme events, careful analysis demonstrates an increasing trend in rainfall in northern England in the last 50 years, and over the last 30 years more winter rain has been falling in heavy events. Researchers in the Environmental Change Institute in Oxford are now equipped to analyse how much the change in frequency of extreme events is attributable to anthropogenic climate change: within a few days of storm ‘Desmond’ arriving last month they were able to process thousands of simulations, with and without the extra effect of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, to establish that human-induced climate change approximately doubled the chances of an exceptionally warm December in central England, and significantly increased the chances of high rainfall further north. Climate change is weighting the dice towards these extreme events. That is very disconcerting for those responsible for flood risk management in the north of England. A £38-million scheme to protect Carlisle that was built after the 2005 flood was overtopped in storm Desmond, just 5 years after having been completed. As flood risk managers we know that there is always a finite probability of overtopping any flood defence – what keeps us awake is the growing recognition that we may not even be able to estimate that probability in future, because of the complexity of climatic changes. You might expect that the possibility of unexpected extremes would be encouraging a more precautionary approach to design of flood defences. Actually in the UK new funding arrangements are pushing designs in the opposite direction. The government is seeking to encourage local contributions to funding alongside cash-limited national funding of flood defences. Schemes that cost a lot less are more affordable for local communities, and we know that lower standards of protection always yield higher benefit–cost ratios. So, in Leeds, a scheme is being built with a lower standard of protection than was originally proposed, because it is more affordable. At a time of budgetary austerity we need to get better at making the economic case for flood risk management particularly in the context of long-term environmental and social change. Needless to say, a series of policy reviews have been announced following the floods. One will address the question I pose above, about the appropriate use of statistics in flood estimation. The review will also examine the resilience of infrastructure to flood risk. Another review will focus particularly on the Cumbrian catchments and try to establish how flood risk can best be managed in this relatively sparsely populated and flood-prone upland area. One striking aspect of the floods has been the attention paid to the potential for changing land use and land management to reduce runoff generation, particularly in the uplands. These nature-based solutions bring multiple benefits: helping to reduce diffuse pollution and soil erosion from agricultural land; reducing water discolouration from peat uplands, which can avoid water treatment costs; restoring habitats; and enhancing recreational value of the landscape. However, the evidence for the effectiveness of these measures comes mostly from field-scale experiments. The evidence from monitoring larger-scale afforestation and deforestation is contradictory in terms of the impacts of land-use change on flooding. In all of these cases, the flood-level reductions that are observed at small scales become less as one moves downstream in larger catchments. Moreover, the effect is less in larger floods, especially when the ground is saturated from antecedent rainfall. Given the number of catchment restoration and ‘rewilding’ initiatives now under way, there should be more opportunities for collecting scientific evidence about their effectiveness, though that will require decent baseline monitoring from before the intervention as well as data collection afterwards. Over the last few years there have been some successfully validated model studies of the effects of changing land-management practices on runoff, but still in fairly small catchments. There is an opportunity to upscale these models to understand the scale of land-use change that would be needed to have a noticeable effect on flooding in large catchments. Given the uncertainties about the effect of rural land management on flood generation in extreme floods and at large scales, it is perhaps surprising that other interventions in catchments and floodplains have received less attention. The evidence about the effects of significant urbanisation (including paving of surfaces and routing of runoff into sewers) on flooding is stronger than the evidence about the effects of rural land-use change; yet the progress in uptake of sustainable drainage systems in England was recently described as ‘lamentable’ by the chair of the UK Independent Committee on Climate Change Adaptation. Encroachment on floodplains, through urban development and construction of flood defences that reduce floodplain cross-sectional area and flood storage, is bound to elevate on water levels, but concepts of making ‘room for the river’ which have been pursued with some determination in the Netherlands have not taken off in Britain. Meanwhile, the saga of flood insurance provision is beginning a new chapter. Britain is unusual in that flood insurance has been provided by private insurers as part of householder's ‘all risks’ insurance package. That arrangement has been under strain for years, so now it is in the process of being supplemented with a subsidised arrangement for houses in floodplains: all insured householders will pay a supplement to enable continued provision of affordable insurance to houses at high risk of flooding. That will make a big difference to householders in floodplains who are finding it increasingly difficult to buy flood insurance; it suits the insurance industry and it solves a political problem for the government. It is not good value for money for all of the other householders who are footing the bill. The plan is that the scheme should be phased out over a 25-year period, by which time insurance premiums should reflect the expected value of flood risk, which means that if nothing else happens in the meantime, we will be back to the position of potentially hundreds of thousands of properties at high risk of flooding without affordable insurance and no protection against flooding. That should underline the need for a long-term strategic approach to manage flood risk. Many initiatives are being proposed. There is a lot of argument about the downs and ups of government spending on flood defence. But as flood risk managers we know that there is no magic solution to the risks of flooding. It requires sustained effort on several fronts over many years." @default.
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• W4236037975 date "2016-02-23" @default.
• W4236037975 modified "2023-09-25" @default.
• W4236037975 title "Journal of Flood Risk Management" @default.
• W4236037975 doi "https://doi.org/10.1111/jfr3.12235" @default.
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