24 & 25 April 2019:
Natural Flood Risk Management : Does it work?
British Hydrological Society national meeting, Lancaster University
Nick Chappell, President-elect of the British Hydrological Society, hosted at a BHS National Meeting on “Natural Flood Management: Does it work?” at Lancaster on 24th April 2019. The NERC NFM programme was well represented with invited presentations from Martin Evans (Protect NFM), Jo Clark (Landwise), Trevor Page and Keith Beven (Q-NFM). These and other presentations will be publically available on the BHS website (http://www.hydrology.org.uk/publications.php).
Additionally, Jo Clark and Gerard Stewart supported an interactive NFM game (see results below), and Barry Hankin (Q-NFM) demonstrated the NFM iTable, with posters from early career team members.
A total of 153 people registered for the event, comprising of 49 attendees from universities (including 32 research students), 38 from environmental consultancies, 29 from government agencies, 26 environmental NGOs and 11 flood action group members.
Fifty people also attended a field day in Cumbria on 25th April, organised by the Q-NFM team and their core partner the Environment Agency (Cumbria). This event comprised presentations and participant discussion at the joint NERC/EA micro-flume at Sedbergh (a Defra NFM pilot site) and the Bowston weir, where Agency staff described the hydrometry, and Q-NFM postdocs explained the modelling of the Kent catchment.
The two events were planned science activities of the bid for NERC NFM PCG funding; the Lancaster-component of this funding subsidised the cost of the BHS meeting (20%) to keep attendee costs low to encourage wide participation. It also fully funded the field day, giving a total contribution to the 2-days of 39% of costs, with other support from attendee registration.
