Quantifying future changes of flood hazards within the Broadland catchment in the UK

Abstract

AbstractFlooding represents the greatest natural threat to the UK, presenting severe risk to populations along coastlines and floodplains through extreme tidal surge and hydrometeorological events. Climate change is projected to significantly elevate flood risk through increased severity and frequency of occurrences, which will be exacerbated by external drivers of risk such as property development and population growth throughout floodplains. This investigation explores the entire flood hazard modelling chain, utilising the nonparametric bias correction of UKCP18 regional climate projections, the distributed HBV-TYN hydrological model and HEC-RAS hydraulic model to assess future manifestation of flood hazard within the Broadland Catchment, UK. When assessing the independent impact of extreme river discharge and storm surge events as well as the impact of a compound event of the two along a high emission scenario, exponential increases in hazard extent over time were observed. The flood extent increases from 197 km2 in 1990 to 200 km2 in 2030, and 208 km2 in 2070. In parallel, exponential population exposure increases were found from 13,917 (1990) to 14,088 (2030) to 18,785 (2070). This methodology could see integration into policy-based flood risk management by use of the developed hazard modelling tool for future planning and suitability of existing infrastructure at a catchment scale.