Scientific consensus indicates that climate change is increasing the frequency and magnitude of serious flood events. The north of England is already experiencing the manifestation of this, with a series of significant flood events in the last decade leading to damage to property and livelihoods. Some organisations are taking action to address this threat by protecting their assets using sustainable flood protection schemes. Assessing and understanding the potential groundwater flood risk is fundamental to delivering a successful flood protection scheme.
Against this backdrop, Yellow Sub Geo work as part of a team of specialists in the field to investigate and assess flood risk and to design and implement flood protection. An example of this work is the design of a flood protection scheme for an industrial facility in the north of England. The owners of the property sought specialist advice from the team after a series of serious floods that led to significant damage and loss of earnings. Yellow Sub Geo were commissioned to design and undertake a programme of investigation and assessment into the potential that rising groundwater may be a significant component of flood events on the site.
We retained hands-on supervision of the drilling of boreholes and installation of monitoring wells, and are undertaking a programme of groundwater monitoring. This focus on gathering a proportional amount of top-quality data has enabled us to construct a robust and bespoke model of groundwater behaviour beneath the site. During site works, the opportunity was also taken to collect geotechnical information, which is being used by the structural engineers in their design of the flood protection measures.
Our work was undertaken on a fast turnaround, with interim reporting to enable the progression of funding and planning application within a tight overall programme. The results to date indicate a small degree of groundwater component to flood events. This knowledge has been used to inform the overall design of flood protection measures, which incorporate a combination of physical barrier and pumping arrangements. Construction is due to start on site in the summer of 2018.
