RIBA - Facing up to rising sea levels: the future of our coastal cities
The Royal Institute of British Architects’ (RIBA) think tank Building Futures and the Institute of Civil Engineers (ICE) launched their provocative new research piece Facing up to rising sea levels, at a breakfast event on Thursday 14 January 2010.
Proposing three radical strategies to help two UK cities at high flood risk - Kingston-upon-Hull and Portsmouth - cope with the extreme effects of rising sea levels, by applying three different approaches:
RETREAT from the rising waters
DEFEND the existing coastal line
ATTACK the challenge head-on
Using the unique topography of the two cities, the report provokes discussion by applying far-sighted, innovative and creative thinking.
Flood facts:
The length of the UK coastline is around 12,429 km or 7723 miles, compared to the coastline of Italy (7,600 km), Spain (4,964 km), France (3,427 km) or The Netherlands (451 km)
Home insurance firms are set to lose £4 billion a year by 2035 on repairing flood water damage
Annual flood defence spending must be increased to a minimum of £750m (currently c. £500m) just to maintain design-specification levels of protection
Around 10 million people, in 5.5 million properties, live in flood risk areas in England and Wales, with 2.6m of those properties at direct risk of flooding from rivers or the sea.
In England the cost of claims from flooding in June and July 2007 exceeded £3.5bn.
In January 1953, over 300 people died and over 24,000 homes were flooded on the east coast of England after flood defences were breached as a consequence of extremely high winds and a tide at dangerous levels.
In Hull, after 100mm of rain fell in 24 hours in the Summer of 2007, 600 streets, nearly 9000 homes and 91 of the city’s 99 schools were flooded. 1300 businesses were affected.
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