Modelling groundwater flood risk in the Chalk aquifer from future extreme rainfall events

Recent events have shown that groundwater flooding is a serious risk to property, infrastructure and social disruption, and is a particular problem for the Chalk of South East England. The nature of this risk is poorly understood, and there is no adequate methodology to assess it. This proposal integrates state-of-the-art models of the soil, unsaturated zone, groundwater and surface water to provide a new modelling tool for risk assessment, and also investigates the use of simpler models for warning of the potential onset of flooding and regional assessment of risk. Experimental data from the NERC Lowland Catchment Research Thematic Programme and historical data from affected areas will be used to test hypotheses and develop and validate the models. The models will be run for future climate states to assess current and future risk using an ensemble of climate models.