Mapping company is flowing with ideas to reduce flood risk

04 June 2008

Local authorities can gain ‘a huge amount of information useful for reducing flood risk quickly’ by modelling storm water flow, according to a software firm.

Represetnatives from Micro Drainage said that a computer model it was building for the West Berkshire town of Thatcham had corresponded with the location of households submitting insurance claims for last summer’s one-in-169-year storm. In ‘just two weeks, we identified the major pluvial flow paths, the vulnerable areas, the speed and depth of flow,’ claimed Aidan Millerick, its managing director.

The more extreme the event, the less detailed the information needed to be, he said. The contribution of the underground drainage system to reducing overland flows during an extreme event was ‘likely to be minimal’.

The Environment Agency is developing a new flood-mapping strategy to improve the quality and coverage of data on flood risk. It is taking on board the finding from government research that a targeted approach to urban flood risk modelling and mapping was needed.

• Micro Drainage is hosting a conference on integrated surface water management on 24 June. : www.microdrainage.co.uk.

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