The establishment of the Flood Resilience Innovation Centre follows a successful bid for £1.9million from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
The centre will enable Humber-based small and medium sized enterprises develop innovative solutions to mitigate flood risk, improve response to flood events and increase resilience where complete flood prevention is impossible.
Flooding is a significant and growing problem regionally, nationally and internationally. Humberside is the second most flood-prone region in the UK, with 205,000 properties, 32,500 businesses and 115,000 hectares of land at risk of tidal, fluvial or surface water flooding. Across the wider UK, 5.2 million homes and other properties (more than one sixth of the total) are at risk of flooding.
Climate change and sea level rise projections suggest that our climate will become stormier, yielding more frequent heavy rainfall events, and that sea levels will rise by 0.35 m by 2060 and 1.0 m by 2110, exacerbating exposure to flooding into the future.
In response to these threats, and building on the University’s strengths in flood research, geosciences, climate change, logistics, computer science and engineering, the centre will help businesses identify research and development opportunities aimed at mitigating flood risk and improving resilience and response.
Businesses will be partnered with world-leading academics and researchers to undertake collaborative research and innovation projects. They will have access to state-of-the-art computer-aided design, high performance computing, rapid prototyping and immersion testing labs to develop their ideas. Collaborations may also involve large companies, other research organisations and agencies to maximise the benefit of investment in SME-led innovations.
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Submitted on 26/06/2019
