Quantifying the effectiveness of natural flood management in lowland

Further calls for the inclusion of natural solutions in flood alleviation schemes
were made following the severe floods in Cumbria, December 2015. Natural
Flood Management (NFM) has emerged over the last decade as a very useful
and sustainable approach. It involves the adoption of a multitude of measures
that mitigate flooding by restoring or enhancing natural processes in upstream
catchment areas. Evidence of the effectiveness of NFM in flood risk
management is limited. Therefore, the overall aim of this project is to monitor
a range of NFM interventions and evaluate their functioning in space and time.
This will provide the information needed by numerical modellers to assess
their effectiveness at a range of scales. More specifically the objectives of this
project would be to: (1) monitor the functioning of NFM interventions both
individually and in combination for a range of event magnitudes and antecedent conditions; (2) define flood
hydrograph metrics and determine the potential of interventions to mitigate specific flood characteristics (e.g.
peak flow, peak level, flood duration, rate of rise); (3) consult numerical modellers to translate measurements of
hydraulic and hydrological intervention functioning into useable parameters (e.g. roughness and storage indices);
(4) interpret and communicate measurements of intervention functioning to a wide range of stakeholders; and (5)
consider the sustainability of interventions and their potential in mitigating future environmental change. This
project benefits from the unique opportunity to monitor the effectiveness of interventions being implemented as
part of the first Thames Basin NFM trial in the Evenlode catchment. This is a 5 year trial (2016 to 2021) being
co-ordinated by the Evenlode Catchment Partnership. The potential of using citizen science to enhance the
monitoring of interventions will be considered. This project will compliment previous NFM modelling studies
and benefit from alignment with current initiatives. A range of novel monitoring techniques will be used to
monitor intervention functioning (e.g. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) photography and a remote controlled
surveying boat).