SRP-IF: Open access global flood hazard layers.

The repeated occurrence of high profile flood events, both within the UK (e.g. Somerset Levels, 2014) and internationally (e.g. Australia and Thailand, 2011), has resulted in sustained public, commercial, political and scientific interest in flood risk. The heightened profile of flooding within the scientific community is reflected in the number of recent and current NERC thematic programmes dedicated wholly or in large part to this topic.

The Hydrology Group at the University of Bristol has been involved in or led numerous programmes, with the result being a substantial improvement in our understanding of flood risk in data-rich regions such as the UK. However flooding is very clearly a worldwide phenomenon and consistent global hazard and risk products do not currently exist but are very urgently required by international governments and NGOs, and by British businesses.

Looking to the future, the continued expansion of cities located on river floodplains and coastal deltas due to population growth and migration is expected to produce a significant increase in flood risk over the coming decades. The prospect is of particular concern to the (re)insurance market, a critical component of the UK financial services sector, as well as to global humanitarian and development organisations such as the World Bank and the United Nations World Food Programme. Recent losses have proven significant: household losses resulting from the summer 2007 floods in the UK reached £2.5 billion, with business losses accounting for a further £1 billion. The reinsurance firm Munich Re estimates that total economic losses from the Australian and Thailand events of 2011 were USD 2.8 billion and USD 40 billion respectively.

Against this background and despite being largely focussed on UK flood risk the above mentioned recent NERC-funded programmes have yielded a number of important research developments that have started to close the knowledge gap that exists for global flood risk. Perhaps most critically, NERC funded research undertaken at the University of Bristol has yielded algorithms that allow very large scale flood models to be undertaken. Further NERC funded research has guided the development of model structures that allow models with global coverage to be developed.

The Hydrology Group at the University of Bristol has built strong links with the insurance market through a long standing partnership with the Willis Research Network, Willis being one of the three dominant global reinsurance brokers. Through this relationship with Willis and other industry partners the potential to develop both freely available global flood hazard layers and commercial flood risk products was identified. Currently flood risk products appropriate for insurance and re-insurance markets exist in only a few territories worldwide. For many developed and emerging markets is near zero provision but significant and growing exposure. At the same time, freely available global flood hazard layers would be a significant benefit to humanitarian agencies such as the World Food Programme and international organisations with significant interests in risk reduction such as the World Bank.

Therefore, this project will produce global flood hazard layers using state of the art methods developed as part of NERC funded science and provide massively open access to these via Google Earth. These layers will be the first global openly accessible assessment of flood hazard that can be used by Governments, NGOs and the entire global public thereby changing fundamentally global awareness of flood hazard and leading to a step change in flood resilience. We will then work with the global (re)insurance industry to identify commercial opportunities relating to this and related NERC funded science. The proposal is supported by Google, NASA-JPL, World Bank, World Food Programme, Willis, Mitsui Sumitomo, Montpelier-Re and the Universities of Reading and Newcastle.