Netherlands-based consulting agency Royal HaskoningDHV has partnered with Viridian Logic, a UK-based landscape modeling company, to introduce a new modeling product to UK water companies.
The modeling service, called FloodNbS, will coordinate green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) to optimal locations in order to reduce flood risk.
Faced with the ongoing challenges presented by climate change, UK water companies need to find cost-effective means to manage flood risk, minimizing damage while also delivering environmental benefits.
GSI, referred to by some as nature-based solutions (NbS) are recognized for providing societal value through sustainability, recreation, biodiversity and climate change resilience impacts. They are also becoming widely recognized as a pragmatic and cost-effective approach to flood risk management.
Flood risk modelling experts Ambiental, part of Royal HaskoningDHV, has partnered with Viridian Logic, which provides Natural Flood Management and ecosystem service solutions, to find the most effective locations for GSI installments.
The two companies have amalgamated geographic information systems (GIS) and hydrology into a single modeling service. The product is designed to determine which natural solutions to create and where best to create them to reduce flooding. It also quantifies the benefits that the various options will deliver, providing a detailed ranking of all potential solutions across a catchment, assessing how effective they will be within local constraints. After determining the optimum solutions for reducing flood damage, it can demonstrate them, using flood hazard maps and risk analytics data.
The service has already been used by some UK water companies, including United Utilities, to use nature-based solution interventions to reduce peak flood flows and alleviate flood risk to drainage infrastructure.
The service can provide ranking on flood, drought, diffuse pollution and erosion with all the non-water nature-based services such as carbon and biodiversity. This helps meet multiple objectives from the same interventions.
SOURCE: Royal HaskoningDHV
