| Institution of Civil Engineers publishes flood resiliency report
The report, ‘Flooding: Engineering Resilience’, highlights the urgent need for spare capacity to be built into the system. Chairman of ICE’s Flooding Group David Balmforth said: “Last summer’s floods showed us how vulnerable the UK’s infrastructure networks are, and little is being done to rectify the situation. The system that gives the people of this country their power, their water, and all the other essentials is stretched to maximum capacity with very little extra tucked away for when things go wrong. “The fact is we are now facing an increasing risk of flooding in this country and there is only so much you can do to protect the networks. If we want to prevent blackouts, water shortages and transportation failures, we need to ensure we have enough spare capacity in the system to deal with disaster.” “Basically, we need to make our critical infrastructure a little less critical.” The report was launched at an event hosted by ICE president David Orr and in the presence of HRH The Duke of Gloucester to mark the one year anniversary of the 2007 floods. ICE president and HRH held a breakfast briefing in Gloucester were they met a number of key stakeholders from the local council and emergency services. After, they visited the Severn Trent Water works in Tewkesbury, which flooded in 2007. The report calls on utility companies to ensure they do more than meet the bare minimum standards of flood defence at individual facilities. It also argues that utilities and other infrastructure organisations must be able to provide an adequate minimum level of vital services needed during an emergency, and for that to happen more capacity is required. ICE President David Orr said: “When the water treatment plant in Tewkesbury was flooded last year, thousands of people in Gloucestershire were left without water. From our visit today it’s good to see some measures have now been taken to protect the plant. But if we stretch our critical infrastructure to work at 100 percent of capacity, then any failure will mean a severe loss of service. We need to invest to make sure our infrastructure is resilient, so even if one plant gets flooded, there will be some spare capacity so that people still get services.” The report also calls for: * Investing in the capacity to deliver. If more is to be done to make the UK more resilient to flooding, responsible bodies need to employ the skilled staff needed to deliver. This is especially true for local authorities who have all but lost their expertise in flooding engineering in recent years. * The creation of a body with statutory duty for flooding strategy and implementation to allow more effective and coherent delivery of flood risk management.
•Date: 26th June 2008• Region: UK •Type: Article •Topic: Emergency planning
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