Evaluation the Public Health Risks of Urban Flooding Events

该项目旨在开发新的微生物和工程工具，以帮助解决城市洪水造成的重大社会挑战。城市洪水沃茨已被证明含有一些污染物，包括可能构成公共卫生风险的微生物。这些污染物可能来自一系列来源，如城市排水系统。因此，直接接触沃茨对公众健康构成重大风险。由于气候危机，极端天气事件和洪水变得越来越严重和频繁，因此这种风险的规模正在增加。目前缺乏对微生物和环境过程的理解，这些过程驱动了浅层洪水和城市表面（洪水后）潜在病原体的动员，运输和生存能力。该跨学科项目将利用谢菲尔德大学世界领先的仪器和实验室设施，研究城市洪水条件下微生物的行为。该项目将涉及新的大规模实验室实验以及分子和微生物遗传学的应用，以更好地了解病原体在城市洪水中的传播和跨水传播。地面界面和确定环境因素的影响，如温度和氧化还原电位对微生物的浓度和生存的范围内的城市表面。这种对洪水中微生物行为的新认识将被应用于开发最先进的风险评估建模工具。预计微生物学和排水/废水工程之间的新相互作用将产生与英国和海外洪水风险管理相关的新科学。

This project aims to develop new microbiological and engineering tools to help address significant societal challenges caused by urban flooding.Urban flood waters have been shown to contain a number of pollutants including microorganisms which might pose a public health risk. These contaminants may originate from a range of sources such as urban drainage systems. Direct exposure to flood waters therefore represents a significant risk to public health. The scale of this risk is increasing since extreme weather events and flooding have become heavier and more frequent due to the climate crisis.Understanding of the microbiological and environmental processes driving the mobilisation, transport and survivability of potential pathogens in shallow flood flows and on urban surfaces (post flood) is currently lacking. This interdisciplinary project will utilise world leading instrumentation and laboratory facilities at the University of Sheffield to study the behaviour of microorganisms under urban flood conditions.This project will involve novel large-scale laboratory experiments and the application of molecular and microbial genetics to better understand dispersion and transport of pathogens within urban floodwaters and across the water/ground interface and determine the influence of environmental factors such as temperature and redox potential on microbial concentration and survival on a range of urban surfaces. This new understanding of the behaviour of microorganisms in floodwaters will be applied to develop state of the art modelling tools for risk assessment.It is expected the novel interaction between microbiology and drainage/wastewater engineering will generate novel science relevant to the management of flood risk both in the UK and overseas.