FUTURE-DRAINAGE: Ensemble climate change rainfall estimates for sustainable drainage

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The new climate projections from the UK have just been released and as part of this, next year, there will be the release of outputs from a number of very high resolution climate models across the UK. These models are able to represent the daily cycle of rainfall, and rainfall characteristics like intensity, duration and frequency of occurrence, much better than coarser resolution models that have been used previously and can therefore help us to understand how short-duration intense rainfall events and flash floods might change in the future. Here we propose to couple them, for the first time, with new, high-resolution flood models for small rapid response catchments, like Boscastle, or urban areas that suffer from flash floods. Together they will be used to update guidance for urban drainage design and methods for urban surface water flood risk assessment in the UK: priorities identified in the National Flood Resilience Review (2016) and restated in the UK Adaptation Sub-Committee's UK Climate Change Risk Assessment 2017 Synthesis Report: Appendix on Urgency Scoring Tables which identified "Risks of sewer flooding due to heavy rainfall" as an area where "more action is needed to deliver sustainable drainage systems, upgrade sewers where appropriate and tackle drivers increasing surface runoff (e.g. impermeable surfacing in urban areas)." This will include new 'uplifts' that can be applied to design storm events to represent climate change effects on storms and recommendations on the updates of existing methods and tools used to tackle surface water flooding.FUTURE-DRAINAGE will add to the evidence-base for the UK Climate Change Risk Assessment and the National Adaptation Programme; and is aligned with the UK Government's 25 Year Environment Plan (2018), specifically the goal of reducing risk of harm from environmental hazards and of adapting to climate by improving climate resilience in the UK. The importance of revised rainfall uplifts and new guidance for UK urban drainage design and urban flood resilience is evidenced in the letters of support our project team has solicited from UK water and sewerage companies, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and informal support from the Environment Agency who considers the work is of particular relevance to applications in surface water management and design of storm water systems. Therefore, FUTURE-DRAINAGE will deliver nationally important research outputs for uptake by government agencies and industrial sectors to improve climate change adaption and resilience in the UK.