Understanding Nature and Risk: Modelling of nature-based solutions for flood risk reduction and analytics
Organizer: JBA Consulting
| Nature-based Solutions (NBS) can reduce flood risk and provide more resilient and lower-cost mitigation. NBS can be applied as green infrastructure strategies that work in harmony with gray infrastructure systems. NBS can also support community well-being, generate benefits for the environment and make progress on the Sustainable Development Goals in ways that gray infrastructure systems alone cannot. NBS are being incorporated into Distaster Risk Management as well as in addressing water security and urban sustainability. Different challenges arise in planning, design and optimisation of NBS depending on scale. At a national or catchment scale, including that of the wider urban system, the optimal mix of green and gray can be economically optimised through risk analytics. At the scale of an individual structure or ecological unit, parameterisations of small scale physical processes must be considered. At all scales in between trade offs and uncertainties need to be understood and considered in the context of perspectives ranging from economics to public and stakeholder engagement to complex hydraulics and ecological processes. The aim of this technical session is to draw attention to the different scales and functions hydrological, hydraulic and coastal modelling can be used in the design and assessment of nature-based solutions. We will demonstrate model approaches and analytics that facilitate decision making along the design continuum between green and grey infrastructure at national, regional and local levels. Examples that use innovative modelling tools will be drawn involving the practical perspectives of the session speakers. This will include both model tools and the basis on which they can be used is workflows for optioneering, design and communication. We have bought together leading consultants and academics from JBA, Arup, Deltares and Imperial College London to present engaging examples of NBS planning and design in action, and the tools and methods involved in their evaluation and optimization over the full range of spatial scales required to mitigate flood risk. |
Speakers:
Blair Spendow, Technical Director, JBA
Mark Lawless, Director at JBA Consulting and JBA Risk Management
Bregje van Wesenbeeck, Expert Nature-based Solutions for DRR and CCA at Deltares
Ali Mashayek, Lecturer at Imperial College London
Vincent Lee, Associate Principal, Arup