floodmanagement（ floodmanagement）.docVIP

Flood management Abstract Flood engineering has a long history. For example, evidence of engineering dates back 4,000 years in the Middle East and China. The aim of flood defence is to reduce the risk of flooding. Two broad categories of flood defence exist: Hard engineering structures, such as dams, levées and channel modification. Soft engineering techniques, such as afforestation, terracing of slopes and the re-creation of floodplains. Hard engineering structures are often point-specific, whereas soft structures are more extensive in area. Introduction As early as 1864 George Perkins Marsh highlighted the problem of flash floods and accelerated soil erosion in the Alps caused by deforestation. Deforestation in lower Provence, France, in the fifteenth to seventeenth century had resulted in erosion of good farmland and the deposition of coarse load on top of it. Today, there is growing awareness that methods of flood engineering should have an environmentally sensitive approach, linking the channel and the drainage basin/floodplain, and not just dealing with the channel. Hard engineering options Channelising has taken place on 25% of the main rivers in England and Wales. Channel widening increases the channel capacity but may lead to increased siltation. In urban areas, land may not be available for widening. Channel deepening can be achieved through dredging or narrowing the channel. It may, however, lead to increased bank instability. Channel straightening removes meanders in rivers, steepening the gradient and increasing velocity, and therefore reducing the flood stage. In contrast, sinuous channels have low channel efficiency. The most famous straightening was that of the Mississippi, where 16 cut-offs reduced the length of the river by 240km. Flood relief channels are used to by-pass existing urban areas where straightening is not an option (Figure 1), and are used as flood overflow channels. Large concrete channels, such as at the Thames in London, are