Water New Zealand & CIWEM Wellington Regional Meeting

This presentation introduces the findings of the Blue-Green Cities research consortium (2013-16) www.bluegreencities.ac.uk and the initial research findings of the EPSRC-funded Urban Flood Resilience research consortium (2016-2020) www.urbanfloodresilience.ac.uk.

The consortia adopt a whole systems perspective that recognises interdependencies between water and other urban systems, including transport, energy and land-use, identifying opportunities for managing stormwater as a resource as well as a hazard to lever the multi-functional benefits of using Blue-Green FRM infrastructure to increase water security. Possibilities range from non-potable uses in homes and commercial buildings (based on RainWater Harvesting) to irrigating green infrastructure (e.g. street trees), managing subsidence, soil moisture enhancement and groundwater recharge. Wider benefits extend to wider enhancement of urban watercourses and ecosystems. New models/protocols form the basis for assessment of the potential for the optimised combinations of B/G+Grey and smart infrastructure to deliver multiple-benefits in UK core cities, nationwide.

Engineered solutions must be better informed and explicitly accounted for in urban planning and development at all spatial scales. Also, optimal urban flood and water management is only deliverable in practice when founded on a deep understanding of the real lives of citizens and community preferences for management of water and public spaces. Consequently, research investigates the planning, development and organisational systems that govern urban flood risk management, and uses Participatory Action Research, and Social Practice Theory to evaluate the attitudes and responses of citizens and communities to innovation in flood and water management.

Colin Thorne is the Chair of Physical Geography at Nottingham University in the UK. He researches flooding and flood management. Following the ‘Millennium Floods’, he co-lead the Government’s Flood Foresight Project (2002-4), which underpinned Defra’s new policy of ‘Making Space for Water’. Between 2008 and 2012, Colin was Deputy Director of the national ‘Flood Risk Management Research Consortium’, developing ideas for ‘Natural Flood Management’. Between 2013 and 2016 he led the ‘Blue-Green Cities’ research consortium and currently leads the ‘Urban Flood Resilience’ research consortium. Colin also has extensive experience in international research. In 2017 he won the ‘Back Award’ of the Royal Geographical Society, for his national and international, policy-related research.