Water research at Bristol

Professor Paul Bates, School of Geographical Sciences

Water at Bristol• ~25 academic staff in 12

Departments from 5 Faculties engaged in water research

• Archaeology and Anthropology, Chemistry, Civil Engineering, Continuing Education, Earth Sciences, Engineering Management Group, Geographical Sciences, Law, Mathematics, Mechanical Engineering, Policy Studies, Social medicine

• Engineers Without Borders is one of our largest student groups?

• Strong commitment as an Institution to developing solutions to major societal problems related to water.

AQUATEST• Aims to develop a low-cost

test for microbial contamination of water sources in developing countries.

• Major funding (to Stephen Gundry) from the EU and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

• Prompted the University to create a Water and Health Research Centre now recognised by the WHO

MoSSaiC• Management of Slope

Stability in Communities• Development of cost

effective protection against landslide risk for Caribbean communities

• Funded by Organisation of East Caribbean States, USAID and the World Bank

Havana Water Project• An EWB-Bristol project• Aims to install leak

control for water supply systems serving 5000 people in Havana, Cuba

• Bristol alumni funded• Winner in the Mondialogo

Engineering Awards 2005 for contributions to poverty reduction

LISFLOOD-FP• 2D flood inundation

model developed at Bristol

• Predicts dynamic flooding along river valley, estuaries and coasts

• Scales ranging from urban areas to major continental rivers

Main interest: flood modelling and risk

Enabling technology: fusing LiDAR and map data

10

• Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar classified at a spatial resolution of 1m, using a statistically active contour (Snake).

• Can also use LiDAR data to help constrain retrieval of shorelines

Carlisle case study – 10m modelPerformance measures:

Inundation correctly predicted = 90%, rmse elevation = 0.32 m

Study area

LISFLOOD-FP Amazon

Comparison of model inundation extent with JERS-1 imagery

dark blue = areas inundated in both the JERS-1 image and the model prediction,

red and cyan = over- and under-prediction by model, respectively

black = uncertainty in the JERS-1 image.

Low water, F= 23%

High water, F=73%