MSc Team Project 2004/5

Dealing with high-impact UK weather - The Boscastle flood

Project Description

This project will look at the way in which the UK attempts to cope with high-impact weather events. It may consider the forecasting of extreme events; the communication of warnings and information to the public; and, the real-time procedures in place for responding to developing situations. To draw these strands together, the Boscastle flood of 16th August 2004 will be used as an example event.

Suggested Organization

There are four students working on the project. It is suggested that student 1 concentrates on the forecasting of extreme weather, student2 concentrates on societal demands and responses and that student3 concentrates on studying the Boscastle flood of 16th August 2004. Suggested resources for each area are provided below.

Student4 would have perhaps the hardest, but perhaps the most interesting, job. This student should aim to look at the general issues explored by students 1 and 2 within the context of case study examined by student3. The question for this student is "what lessons can be learned for the future?" They should use key resources from the other areas and seek out new ones of their own. In linking the various aspects together some things for student4 to think about (with plenty of collaboration and input from the rest of the team!) are: how well forecast was this flood? how might it have been better forecast? how much warning was available and to who? was the right information made available to the public in the right way? was the planning of local and government agencies effective in this case? how did life return to normal? (has it?) The team will have to work well as a team to help student4 do their job. Frequent discussion will be important, and carefully-chosen resources should be passed between students.

Suggested Resources

Important note: The following links and pointers to resources are intended as starting points only. You should chase any links and citations that seem interesting from these sites and articles (and then follow the links from the links and so on...) You should also make your own library and internet searches. I assume you are familiar with some of the archived weather data available on the web (if not then start with the links on the Weather and Climate Discussion pages) and you should use them to try to find out as much as you can about the meteorological conditions leading to the Boscastle flood.

Government Bodies and Public Responses to Extreme Weather

(With thanks to Gavin Lambert of DEFRA for pointing me to some of these references.)

The Environment Agency website has a great deal of information about floods and a number of useful links. A good place to start on their site is here. Their flood policy is here. They also have a number of publications (policy documents, leaflets distributed to the public etc) that can be found from here.

An exercise was carried out last year to simulate a devastating flood and test system responses. There may be a limited amount in the public domain regarding this, but it might be worth a further check with Google.

DEFRA also have a lot of information available on their webpages. Here is a starting point. See also the 'Making space for water consultation document' Section 14: Flood warning systems and emergency responses - here - and also available from their website.

You might also try the National Flood Forum.

Forecasting Extreme Weather

The Met Office have a forecasting service dedicated to storm tides as well as its flood forecasting services. You can also find a great deal of information if you start by typing "Nimrod" or "Gandolf" or even "flood forecasting" into the search enegine on the Met Office homepage.

Extreme weather forecasting at the European Severe Storms Laboratory and in the United States at the Storm Prediction Center.

The Tornado and Storm Research Organisation, TORRO.

The Boscastle Flood

A preliminary report into the Boscastle flood has been released by the Environment Agency.

A special issue of the Journal of Meteorology was published in November 2004 dedicated to the Bosacastle flood. I will provide a copy of this (it's my copy so please return it at the end of the project!). In particular see the article by Robert Doe which gives an outline of the meteorology.

Type obvious phrases into Google: eg, when I tried "Boscastle flood" the first link was an extensive photo gallery of the event. You should be able to find plenty of old news reports this way. For discussion "as it happened" try searching some of the forums at UK Weather World (you may need to register to be able to access some of the pages there).