A project funded by the Leverhulme Trust.
(Featured image courtesy of NOAA Digital Coast.)
We hypothesise that scaling laws for flood deposits in built environments differ systematically from those for flood deposits in non-built environments.
Population and land-use pressures on river and coastal floodplains means that flood events deposit large volumes of sediment and debris in built environments. These “unnatural” flood deposits are ubiquitous, delay emergency response, and are costly to clean up. We aim to predict how spatial characteristics of the built environment control the shape, scale, movement, and distribution of flood deposits. We will measure and model flood deposits in built and non-built environments to quantify and explain their differences. This project is a formative step in transdisciplinary research into how natural phenomena interact with and impact built environments.
TEAM
Dr Evan Goldstein – Co-investigator; Dr Hannah Williams – Research Fellow; Luke Taylor – PhD student
GALLERY
Checking out the Total Environment Simulator facility at the University of Hull. 
Hannah captains a new mini-tank for mini-tests. 
Road-testing the mini-tank – multiple washovers. 
Floodplain roughness elements. 
Hannah’s initial floodplain trial. (The baseplates float.) 
Close-up of washover into an “urban fabric” of a kind.
RELATED PUBLICATIONS
Lazarus ED, Goldstein EB (2019) Is there a bulldozer in your model? Journal of Geophysical Research Earth Surface 124, 696–699. (open access: link)
