A single flood is bad enough; this project tackles the far more dangerous scenario of multiple floods striking in quick succession, before defences can be repaired or communities can recover. Current flood risk models assume a "stationary" climate, where past data reliably predicts future events. This approach fails to account for the observed clustering of storms—where a second flood hits a weakened defence system or a vulnerable population still recovering from the first. The project fills this gap by analysing historical storm records and simulating these compound events, including how previous floods strip beaches of sand or shift riverbed sediment, leaving coasts and rivers in a weaker state for the next storm. If successful, the research could fundamentally change how the UK designs its flood defences and allocates resources for protection and recovery. Instead of planning for single, isolated events, engineers and local authorities could build resilience against the worst-case sequences. The methods developed could also be applied worldwide, helping other nations prepare for the increased storminess projected under future climate change.
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The project will look at the most critical flood scenarios caused by sequences or clusters of extreme weather events striking vulnerable systems of flood defences, urban areas, communities and businesses. The project will analyse and simulate situations where a second flood may strike before coastal or river defences have been reinstated after damage, or householders and small businesses are in a vulnerable condition recovering from the first flood. By examining such events and identifying the worst case scenarios, we hope our findings will lead to enhanced flood resilience and better allocation of resources for protection and recovery. Ultimately the processes developed could be used worldwide. Changes in the frequency and severity of flooding are under close scrutiny due to increased storminess in projections of future climate. The project will look at observed records of storms and try to understand how clustering may obscure or even exacerbate any climate induced changes. This is crucial for designing flood defence schemes now, which will operate for decades into the future, as current methods of estimating risk in a stationary climate do not fully account for the observed clustering of flood events and possible changes in variability. Other aspects of the project will look at how coasts (beaches, dunes and engineered defences) and rivers behave during storms. Of particular interest is the effect of previous storms and floods moving sediment (i.e. shingle, sand and river bed material) so that the beach or river is in a different (perhaps weaker) condition when a second flood event arrives. The movement of sediment is difficult to predict as mostly happens during storms, so our knowledge of these processes is currently lacking.
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