Integrating water management and spatial planning

Developments in England (and elsewhere)

UK Context

• April 2004 – Foresight Future Flooding report Published• July 2004 – making Space for Water programme initiated• July 2004 – Com (2004) 472 Final, Flood risk management,

Flood prevention, protection and mitigation• June and July 2007 – Major floods in many areas of England• October 2007 – Directive 1007/60/EC on the assessment and

management of flood risks• Pitt Review final report published 25th June 2008• November 2009 – Flood and Water Management Bill

published• December 2009 - Flood Risk Regulations published• April 2010 - Flood and Water Management passed

What’s climate change about and how will it affect our

cities?• More intense rainfall?• Longer duration heavy rainfall?• More frequent intense and long duration rainfall?• Is it just more of what we already get?• It’s also about heat island, and pressure on water supply.• And there are other things to consider

– Increasing population and demographic change– What is the impact of declining oil reserves and increasing

competition for what’s left– What about food security and the demand for irrigation against those

for urban water supply?

• What are our cities going to look like in the future?

A vision of what might happen if we just carry on as

normal• River Aire Strategic Studies

KEIGHLEY HIGH LEVEL

KEIGHLEY LOW LEVELSUTTON IN CRAVEN

BINGLEY

HARDEN VALLEYSHIPLEY

EAST BRADFORD

THORNTON VALLEY

LITTLE HORTON

HORTON VALLEY

HEATON & FRIZINGHALL

CITY CENTRE/WTS

MANNINGHAM

MANCHESTER RD/BOWLING

Baildon

ECCLESHILL & GREENGATES

RAWDON

YEADON

RODLEY

PUDSEY

SMALEWELL

MORLEY

MIDDLETON

WORTLEY

HORSFORTH

WYKEBECK

MEANWOOD

GIPTON

50 Km

Aire study objectives

• To review available data and identify additional data needs.• To review the pressures for land use change from regional

spatial strategy and specific regeneration initiatives and quantify the likely impacts on all forms of surface water management systems at a local scale.

• To assess current and future flood risk and water quality impacts resulting from land use and climate changes at strategic level for the River Aire catchment in Bradford and Leeds and at local level for selected locations.

Impact of climate change, development and creep

Impact of climate change, development, creep and event probability on surface flow volume

0

5000

10000

15000

20000

25000

30000

35000

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Event probability (1 in (x) years)

Su

rfac

e fl

ow

vo

lum

e (c

.m.)

2005

2025

2055

2085

Conclusions

• Flooding– Increase in the number of vulnerable locations by approximately 40%– Increase in the surface water flow volume by around 100%– Increase in the frequency of surface water flooding at vulnerable

locations by around 200%

• Water quality– Typical discharge volumes to receiving waters may increase by at least

60%– Typical biochemical oxygen demand loads may increase by around

50%– Typical suspended solids loads may increase by over 120%

• Can we afford not to do anything?

If climate change means more water in our cities, what do

we want to do?• Do we want to spend a fortune and bring our cities to a

standstill by increasing the size of our sewers?• Do we want to manage the occasional excess water on the

surface at minimum cost through appropriate urban design?• Anyone who prefers increasing the size of our sewers can go

straight to the asylum now.• That doesn’t mean that we abandon our sewers, they are a

really valuable asset. For more than a century they have been proved to be really sustainable. However we need to use them to their maximum benefit.

• Are we agreed that this is what we want to do?• If not we need to talk and work out our differences!

But what can we do?

• This is what is likely to happen and what we have to do

• Threshold of acceptability is the same as Tipping Point

Unstructured development Time

Climate change

Drainage infrastructure enhancements

Increasing flood risk

Reducing flood risk

Threshold of acceptability

T1 T2

Planning horizon

Management of the urban surface

Socio economic adaptation (Densification, retreat reduced expectations etc)

Structured development

Identify current and potential future risks, and who is responsible for managing them

Water type Water category sub category

Rural and urban areas

Exceedence pathways

Surface water and soil

Rural green spaceGreen space at urban fringeGreen space within urban areaDeveloped urban surface

Groundwater

Artificial superficial deposits(Made, Worked, In filled, Disturbed or Landscaped Ground)Natural superficial deposits Bedrock

Drainage infrastructure

Combined sewerSurface water sewer Foul sewerSUDS/Source controlPipe drainOpen Drain

Streams and ponds

Small Stream2

OpenPiped/culvertedBuilt over

Large Stream3

OpenPiped/culvertedBuilt over

Ponds Ponds with outletsPonds without outlets

Rivers and lakes

River1

LakesLakes with outletsLakes without outlets (oxbow)Salt lakes (inland seas)

Artificial water bodies

Drainage channelCanalReservoirs

Coastal Estuaries and deltasOpen sea

Adopt a task and role orientated approach

• This focuses on doing the job of flood risk management.• Driven by practitioner needs.• It’s more common to start from the position of legislation and

institutions, but tends to omit whole areas of flood risk management as the law doesn’t cover everything.

• By looking at it from doing the job, duties, powers, voluntary action and areas of inaction can be identified.

What is the task?• Section 2.2 COM (2004) 472 final provides guidance on

management the risk of floods as follows:– Prevention: preventing damage caused by floods by avoiding construction of

houses and industries in present and future flood-prone areas; by adapting future developments to the risk of flooding; and by promoting appropriate land-use, agricultural and forestry practices;

– Protection: taking measures, both structural and non-structural, to reduce the likelihood of floods and/or the impact of floods in a specific location;

– Preparedness: informing the population about flood risks and what to do in the event of a flood;

– Emergency response: developing emergency response plans in the case of a flood;

– Recovery and lessons learned: returning to normal conditions as soon as possible and mitigating both the social and economic impacts on the affected population”.

This is often represented as follows

But the task is neither cyclical or sequential

• Things happen at the same time, they can intertwine and synergies can be developed

Time

Alleviation and avoidance

Analysis and assessment

Awareness

AssistanceRecovery RecoveryPreparation Response

All clearWarning

Significant eventInter event period with minor events

So who is involved?

Water type Water category sub category

Discipline

Water specialists

Planning and

building control

specialists

Highway specialists

Landscape specialists

Administrator, financial and

legal specialists

Rural and urban areas

Exceedence pathways

Surface water and soil

Rural green spaceGreen space at urban fringeGreen space within urban areaDeveloped urban surface

GroundwaterArtificial superficial depositsNatural superficial deposits Bedrock

Drainage infrastructure

SewersSUDS/Source controlDrains

Streams and ponds

Small Stream2

Large Stream3

PondsRivers and lakes

River1

LakesArtificial water bodies

Drainage channelCanalReservoirs

Coastal Estuaries and deltasOpen sea

Stakeholder analysis, who does what?• Identify the organisations that are involved and the tasks they

carry out– Awareness raising (including lessons learned)– Analysis and assessment (identifying flood hazards and risk)– Avoidance and Alleviation (actions to prevent and protect from flooding)– Assistance (preparing for, responding to and helping recover from floods).

• Then identify who does what within organisations• Identify if actions are legal duties, legal powers, viluntary and

also where there are no actions.• Agree who should do what• Write it all down and formalise it. Don’t just carry it round in

your head. Get it clear and get it right

This enables

• Communication pathways within and between organisations to be identified.

• The need for the development of competencies to be identified.

• The need for capacity building to be identified.– Tools (software)– Procedures– Organisational infrastructure (for communication and information

sharing)– Etc.

• In effect an emerging strategy for flood risk management

Where are we?• In England legislation has created a duty to produce local flood risk

management strategies.• The top down guidance is being produced by administrators rather

then practitioners. Therefore, although the intentions are good, there are shortcomings.

• Aware that this was likely to happen, the UoS and Bradford involvement in projects such as SKINT, MARE and FRC provides the opportunity to identify the gaps and how to fill them.

• The methods are being tried and tested by different project partners, e.g. Bradford worked on an earlier version and Hannover started the process last week and have identified what they do now

• This is an ongoing process that will be completed in the next two years and all are welcome to join in.

Hannover analysis• Tables 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, are check lists for the different topic

groups relevant to flood risk management. The stakeholders responsible for each cell within the table should be identified together with an assessment of whether the stakeholder is acting because of legislative duties, legislative powers, or voluntarily. Each cell may be completed by entering a unique number for each stakeholder followed by a letter as follows:

• D for a duty set down in statute• P for a power set down in statute• V for a voluntary action• Therefore cells may be completed 1P, 4V etc.• Some of the tasks are either not relevant to some of the

water types and some are not possible to do.• Table 6 identifies the stakeholders and their roles

Table 6, stakeholder reference numbers and their

roles

Table 1

Table 2

Table 3

Table 4

Table 5

Thank you for your attention