Forensic Engineering

Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers

Understanding the risks from extreme

rainfall
Tye

http://dx.doi.org/10.1680/feng.14.00002
Paper 1400002
Received 02/03/2014
Accepted 05/01/2015
Keywords: floods & floodworks/risk & probability analysis/
sustainability

ice | proceedings

ICE Publishing: All rights reserved

Understanding the risks from

extreme rainfall
Mari R. Tye CEng, PhD, MICE
Project Scientist, MMM, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder,
USA

Empirical engineering design based on single fail safe target return periods is not appropriate in a non-stationary
future climate. Extreme responses to rainfall are very likely to increase under climate change, posing increased
hazards to critical infrastructure and the most vulnerable sectors of society. Structures with long life spans require
reasonable estimates of the hazards that will be faced now and in the future, necessitating some assessment of future
rainfall extremes. Such challenges are not new. Although future climate conditions may be unprecedented,
techniques to optimise water management and minimise risk in more extreme climate regimes are not. Designs that
account for future climatic extremes could benefit from other countries experiences of highly variable extreme
rainfall. This paper synthesises the physical mechanisms leading to extreme rainfall, and their representation in
climate models. It then summarises recent observed changes in extreme rainfall and the anticipated future changes in
response to changing climate conditions. Finally, it discusses ways in which different measures of extreme rainfall,
such as seasonality and intensity, can be used to inform designs for future flood resilience.

1.

Introduction

Climatic extremes such as flood, drought, windstorm and heat

wave pose multi-dimensional hazards to critical infrastructure
and the most vulnerable sectors of society, and are expected to
become worse with climate change (IPCC, 2012) and the
increasing location of people in high-risk areas. Riverine
(fluvial) and surface water (pluvial) flooding were identified as
the greatest threats to the UK (Defra, 2012) implying that the
UK is highly sensitive to extreme rainfall (Krebs et al., 2010;
Met Office, 2011). The Association of British Insurers
estimated that the insured costs of UK flooding over
Christmas and the New Year period 2013/2014 were 426
million (ABI, 2014); and the Committee on Climate Change
cautioned that current flood defence spending plans will lead to
3 billion avoidable damages over the next 10 years
(Adaptation Sub-Committee Secretariat, 2014). Yet, research
programmes in engineering have only recently started to
address the issue of adaptation planning for complex
meteorological hazards, even though this has been identified
as an urgent requirement, with respect to effective risk and
financial management (Krebs et al., 2010; Stern, 2007).
Although increased development on flood plains may be in
part responsible for the recent rise in flood damages, recent
studies (e.g. Bloschl and Montanari, 2010) point towards an
increase in heavy rainfall incidences (leading to floods) in
comparison with previous decades. Many flood hot spots
around the world have experienced several devastating floods
in the most recent decade (Figure 1), more than would be
expected from natural variability alone (Min et al., 2011). Each

of the events had enormous social and financial consequences

and projections of future climate responses, together with
increased exposure, indicate that this is likely to become worse
(Zhang et al., 2011).
There has been a substantial increase in the impacts of heat
waves, droughts and floods (e.g. Munich RE, 2013), and
climate projections indicate that these will increase in the UK
in the future (IPCC, 2013; Murphy et al., 2009). Yet
appropriate risk and hazard management strategies cannot
be devised without a proper understanding of the potential
impacts and vulnerability of infrastructure and society to
extreme rainfall under current climatic conditions. Traditional
risk management strategies often examine a single hazard, such
as the annual maximum daily rainfall total, even though these
are insufficient to detect the conditions that may lead to a
significant impact (Leonard et al., 2014). Thus, it is important
to consider several aspects of a hazard and the different
responses that may enhance vulnerability and risks.
Many organisations and governments worldwide are endeavouring to understand the true impacts, both current and
future, of climate change. The UK Committee on Climate
Change is one such organisation aiming to identify the
observable impacts in different sectors (e.g. health, agriculture), their secondary impacts on other sectors and their likely
future evolution, using the UK climate change projections
(Murphy et al., 2009). The first phase of a similar exercise was
completed in New York prior to the arrival of Hurricane
Sandy (Rosenzweig et al., 2011), identifying many areas that
1

Forensic Engineering

Understanding the risks from

extreme rainfall
Tye

Offprint provided courtesy of www.icevirtuallibrary.com

Author copy for personal use, not for distribution

2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
OpenStreetMap (and) contributors, CC-BY-SA

2011

Figure 1. Recurrence of global large flood events 20002011

identified from news, government, instrument and remote sensing
sources (produced from data available at Brackenridge (2011))

were subsequently affected. The difficulty with implementing

these assessments is that changes in mean climate behaviour
are better understood and documented than changes in
extreme weather, yet the damage caused by the latter has the
greatest impact on society. The United Nations estimates that
by 2050 approximately 6?5 billion people will live in cities that
are highly vulnerable to natural hazards such as hurricanes and
tidal surges (Sundermann et al., 2013). As a result, it is critical
to understand the risks posed by extreme weather, their natural
variability and the likely changes in the hazards and the
impacts to improve resilience.
Resilient design is a concept that is gaining popularity,
particularly among politicians and budget holders, yet it is
often confounded in use with resistant design. The Oxford
English Dictionary defines resilience as the capacity to recover
quickly from difficulties; toughness, while resistance is defined
as the ability not to be affected by something, especially
adversely. The two are very different approaches: the latter
implies that a system is fail safe and engenders a false belief of
minimal impact, whereas the former accepts that failure will
occur and aims to minimise the consequences. Resilience is
interpreted here as the ability to recover to a stable state of
operation after systematic failure and does not include
immediate corrective responses to a high-impact event (e.g.
2

OConnell and Hall, 2007). Resilient design adopts a tiered

approach, incorporating a degree of resistance to failure,
planned redundancy to minimise the damage and disruption
caused by an extreme event, and an approach to facilitate
recovery. These designs also balance economic, social and
political constraints through on-going two-way communication and collaboration.
The current paper summarises current scientific knowledge for
those with limited expertise in meteorology or climate science,
to demonstrate that flexibility in design will help improve
resilience to future flooding. It outlines the different influences
on extreme rainfall in the UK, then outlines the models and
tools used to estimate future hazards. It then summarises
recent research on the changes in extreme rainfall characteristics before outlining the likely consequences for flood
hydrology and some possible mitigation measures.

2.

Background science

Climate change is a continuous process, arising from atmospheric responses to internal perturbations (i.e. natural
variability) and to external forcing, such as volcanic activity
or solar variability, in addition to anthropogenic influences.
However, these atmospheric responses are changing more
rapidly than previously experienced as a consequence of the

Forensic Engineering

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extreme rainfall
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post-industrial anthropogenic forcing (IPCC, 2013). While the
primary consequences of increased mean global temperature
are well understood such as increased drought periods, rapid
melting of icecaps and glaciers, and an enhanced hydrological
cycle establishing the point at which the primary responses
differ from natural climate variability and display irrefutable
evidence of a change in climate is a subject of much research.
For example, while it is now certain that the land surface air
temperatures have increased everywhere since the late twentieth century, particularly since the 1970s, there is only medium
confidence that heavy rainfall events have changed over North
America and Europe (IPCC, 2013). There will always be a new
extreme event, possibly unforeseeable, to break previous
records, and there is a natural tendency for extremes to cluster
together; thus, it is often difficult to discern the difference
between natural climatic variability and long-term changes in
behaviour of extreme events over recent time periods.
Extreme value analysis applied to very rare, highly damaging
events may be limited by the paucity of records, but it does serve
to put some of the unforeseen most extreme events into context
and identify the likely return frequency for use in practical
applications such as flood defence design (Mandelbrot and
Wallis, 1968). However, the stationarity assumptions that were
once appropriate for estimating the return frequency of severe
events can no longer be applied indiscriminately (Milly et al.,
2008), as climate change continues to enhance natural climatic
variability and increase the extremes of the hydrological cycle
(Trenberth, 2011).
To understand the probability of an extreme rainfall event, it is
first necessary to understand the governing weather systems
that generate these extremes. Heavy and extreme rainfall can
arise from two different scales of rain-bearing systems:
synoptic scale (1001000 km2) and meso scale (110 km2).
Synoptic scale: mid-latitude frontal depressions frequently
affect the UK and are most common in winter. Frontal
depressions are usually generated over the North Atlantic, are
often very large, can be fast travelling and can be enhanced by
the remnants of tropical cyclones. During the summer, frontal
depressions often contain embedded convection cells that
generate intense areas of localised rainfall and exacerbate
flooding. Severe local cyclones, also called windstorms and
Arctic hurricanes, result in substantial wind damage and
widespread flooding.
Meso scale: these systems are more frequent in the summer or
where high-temperature differentials occur, such as in the
foothills of highly mountainous areas. Thunderstorms or
convective cloud systems are the most common cause of UK
summer storms and are often short lived and very small in
area, making them particularly hard to reproduce in weather

prediction or climate models. These systems produce some of

the highest rainfall rates in northwest Europe.
Different air masses have particular characteristics related to
available convective energy, air pressure and humidity, which
drive different weather conditions. Although extremes of wind
and rain may not often occur at the same time, extreme rainfall
events are governed by synoptic scale circulations where the
cyclonic winds draw additional rainfall into the water column
from a radius of three to five times greater than the rainfall
region (Trenberth, 2011).
The UK is situated between the polar jet (5060 N) and the
sub-tropical jet (30 N), at the boundary of different air masses.
The polar jet tends to shift towards the equator during the
winter, causing Atlantic depressions to deepen and increase the
associated rainfall. Although the years 2011 to 2013 were
associated with anomalously southerly polar jet locations and
more frequent rainfall, there is evidence to suggest that the
polar jet has moved further north since the 1970s (IPCC, 2013),
and by corollary the North Atlantic storm track, possibly
leading to a greater northsouth divide in wet and arid
conditions across the UK in the future. Figure 2 illustrates the
movement of air masses associated with the jet stream and the
principal wind systems.
Recent years are notable for exceptionally strong La Nina and
El Nino conditions, which are associated with extreme weather
conditions in different parts of the world, as well as
particularly strong North Atlantic sea level pressure differentials reflected in the North Atlantic oscillation index.
However, large-scale weather patterns are only one of several
explanatory variables in a highly complex system governing
severe and extreme storm conditions. The UK Adaptation
Sub-Committee recently identified a lack of acknowledgement
of climate-related risks in major strategic decisions in the UK
(Krebs et al., 2011), even though flexible adaptation actions
that are implemented now will limit future potential damages
and may also bring short-term benefits. To characterise the
current risks from extreme rainfall and their future evolution,
and so improve resilience, it is necessary to incorporate
knowledge of their dependence on atmospheric processes and
relationships with other meteorological conditions and teleconnections into the decision-making process.

3.

Climate modelling

Given the non-stationarity of the climate, from short-term

diurnal cycles to seasonal and multi-annual fluctuations, it is
important to use sufficiently long time series of high-quality
rainfall observations to distinguish natural variability from
other divergent behaviour. Given the complexity of the climate
system and responses, simple extrapolation of observed trends
into the future is not judicious. Observational records provide
3

Forensic Engineering

Understanding the risks from

extreme rainfall
Tye

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Subtropical jet

Polar jet

Tropopause

Hadley
cell

Ferrel
cell
Polar cell

North Pole

Northerlies
(cold)

60N

Sou-westerlies
(warm)

30N
Trade winds

Equator
Inter-tropical
convergence zone

Figure 2. The relative positions of polar and sub-tropical

jets and their associated air movements. Reproduced
from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jestream/global/jet.htm (accessed 1
February 2014)

fundamental atmospheric knowledge that assists in assessing

the likely future behaviour of extreme rainfall and to validate
the output from physically based models, such as global or
regional climate models (GCMs or RCMs).

boundary conditions and improving the representation of finescale processes (refer to Figure 4). Further developments to
refine grid scales below 4 km, as employed for numerical weather
predictions, are also being developed to improve temporal and
spatial representation of convective rainfall. These refinements
are particularly important in regions that are sensitive to extreme
convective rainfall such as Boscastle in 2004. In the absence of
high-resolution data, RCM outputs can be downscaled to the
local scale using statistical techniques from simple linear
relationships with their observed counterpart, through to more
complex additive models based on well-represented atmospheric
processes (e.g. Jones et al., 2013a).

Global climate models are effective at reproducing the largescale atmosphereocean responses for the recent and past
climate, giving confidence in probabilistic future projections
(e.g. Murphy et al., 2009). Computational costs limit GCMs to
a grid spacing of around 100150 km, resulting in powerful
representation of global scale circulation responses and
continental rainfall or temperature patterns, but less effective
representation (Rummukainen, 2010) at the regional and local
scales required by most decision makers. As model construction and processing power are constantly evolving, so too is the
development of higher resolution grid GCMs, greater complexity in atmospheric processes and improved representation over
high elevations. Figure 3 illustrates the differences in the
representation of regional mean winter daily rainfall between
the different model scales and gridded observations.
Regional climate models employ boundary conditions derived
from the downscaled outputs of GCMs to run atmospheric
responses on a smaller scale (approximately 436 km). However,
the resultant models cannot always reproduce the atmospheric
processes within the model layers, as interactions between largescale flow and the topographical features are not always well
defined by the boundary conditions. A new development is the
use of global climate models comprising uniform and variable
Voronoi tessellated grids, centred over the region of interest at a
grid spacing of 15 km, expanding out to 120 km across the rest
of the globe (Skamarock et al., 2012), removing the influence of
4

A commonly cited reason for not adapting infrastructure design

to cope with a changing climate, and particularly enhanced
extreme events, is the level of uncertainty in future estimates
based on climate projections (Overpeck, 2000), and imbalance
between the outlay costs and potential benefits of the actions
(Wilby and Dessai, 2010). Detection of real changes in observed
climate responses is therefore essential to facilitate appropriate adaptation action to be taken by decision makers; some
successful detection approaches are now appearing (Done et al.,
2013; Holland and Bruye`re, 2014), but the lack of community
consensus makes it difficult to make decisions other than
understanding the type of risk involved. Understanding the
current mechanisms of failure and sources of risk is likely to
highlight that the uncertainty surrounding future projections is
the least important variable in medium to long-term design
decisions. Further, identifying the causes of flooding will
demonstrate that design approaches based only on the annual
maximum daily rainfall total are not always appropriate and
leave little scope for flexible adaptation in the future.

Forensic Engineering

Understanding the risks from

extreme rainfall
Tye

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Daily average rainfall SRES A2

mm

40N

in single day annual maxima over the south and east. Seasonal
evaluations demonstrated that the largest widespread changes
in intensity are in winter rainfall, while north and western
regions are also experiencing increases in spring and autumn
rainfall intensity. Results for the summer were variable across
the UK but pointed to an increase in the most intense maxima
and a slight decrease in very heavy rainfall.

30N

120W

100W

80W

Daily average rainfall (12 km NARC2)

mm

40N

30N

120W

100W

80W

Daily average rainfall (4 km PRISM)

mm

One of the drivers of flooding is high-intensity rainfall over

ground that is saturated from several antecedent events. Yet few,
if any, previous studies have examined the frequency of extreme
rainfall events, especially their tendency to occur in rapid
succession over a period of weeks (clustering) or in cycles over
several years. A summary is presented below of a novel statistical
technique that is informed by atmospheric and oceanic drivers to
establish when extreme rainfall occurs throughout the year and
the inter-annual variability. By characterising extreme rainfall
occurrences and intensity in this way it is possible to interpret
current extreme rainfall behaviour in the context of natural
climatic variability and climate change. The use of climatological
observation series that are well represented in climate models
means that climate projections may be statistically downscaled
from RCMs or GCMs and facilitate more effective hydrological
adaptation action planning.

40N

30N

120W

100W

80W

mm

Figure 3. Mean winter daily rainfall totals from 100 km GCM, 12

km RCM compared with 4 km gridded observations. (Refer to Done
et al. (2013) for information on data)

4.

Observed changes in UK extreme rainfall

Recent research has focused on changes in observed extreme

daily rainfall and on the governing processes to anticipate what
is likely to occur with future changes in the climate. Much
attention has been given to the likely return period (or annual
probability) of extreme rainfall, whether in the press or in the
design process, and several studies examined the annual
maximum daily totals and their evolution over the past century
(e.g. Jones et al., 2013b; Maraun et al., 2008). Using up to 600
Met Office daily observation stations across the UK and
Northern Ireland, these studies concurred that the intensity of
the most extreme events is changing, with increases in multiday maxima over the north and west of the UK and decreases

Figure 5 illustrates the seasonal variability in rainfall occurrences and their associated intensity for two regions: North
Highlands and Islands of Scotland (Figure 5(a)) and southeast England (Figure 5(b)). The top row shows the relative
frequency (frequency density) of rainfall occurrences per day of
the year, whereas the solid lines indicate rainfall maxima and
the dashed lines indicate mean daily rainfall. Vertical lines
indicate the first day of March, June, September and
December. There is a distinctive seasonal pattern in extreme
daily rainfall occurrences, with the lowest frequency of extreme
events during the spring, and considerable differences between
the two regions. The frequency of extreme daily rainfall in the
North Highlands and Islands is dominated by large autumn
and winter frontal systems, whereas southeast England has two
peaks in frequency relating to summertime convective systems
and autumnal frontal systems. In contrast, mean daily rainfall
occurrences for both regions are most frequent during the
winter and less frequent during summer months.
There is also a seasonal pattern in rainfall intensity (Figure 5
bottom row) illustrated by the standardised regional mean
daily rainfall (dashed lines) and standardised regional median
annual maximum rainfall (solid lines). Individual station daily
rainfall and maxima were standardised by the station mean
daily or median annual maximum rainfall (19611990),
respectively, to remove orographic and exposure effects. The
regional values were then calculated from the weighted mean of
all stations in the region, with weighting based on the station
5

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Figure 4. Model prediction across scales variable-resolution

Voronoi mesh with 10 242 grid cells centred over North America.
Developed jointly by the National Center for Atmospheric Research
and Los Alamos Laboratory. Further information in Skamarock et al.
(2012)

record length. Although there is a strong seasonal cycle in

mean daily rainfall intensity, related to autumn and winter
frontal systems, there is little variation in the intensity of daily
rainfall maxima throughout the year. Marginal peaks in
extreme event intensity (e.g. September in North Highlands
and Islands) do not coincide with peaks in the frequency of
extreme daily rainfall occurrences.

on the right are the probability of an extreme event on each

day of the year for successive 25-year periods, showing an
evolution towards the highest probability occurring later in
the year. Figures on the left chart the highest probability of
extreme events per year, with a smooth spline trend line and
an estimate of the period with the highest probability of an
extreme event.

Complex statistical linear models examine the natural variability in these multimodal seasonal patterns and quantify
apparent trends in the observations. This is the first time that
such models have been used to identify changes in within-year
clustering, given the prevailing atmospheric conditions over the
last 110 years, and so to distinguish trends from randomness.
Figure 6 illustrates some results from the statistical models for
the same regions as Figure 5, North Highlands and Islands
(Figure 5(a)) and southeast England (Figure 5(b)). Figures

There is considerable natural variability in the seasonal patterns

of extreme daily rainfall occurrences from year to year. However, there is a change in the timing of the most extreme events
(later in autumn in the two illustrated regions). There is also a
statistically significant increase in the probability of an extreme
rainfall event during the period of the year when most events
occur. In other words, there is a higher probability of several
extreme rainfall events occurring in rapid succession; this has
considerable implications for flood risk management both now

Forensic Engineering

Understanding the risks from

extreme rainfall
Tye

1.0
Frequency density
0.4 0.6 0.8
0.2

Winter

Spring

100

50

Summer
150

200

Autumn
250

300

0.2

Frequency density
0.4 0.6 0.8

1.0

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350

Winter

Spring

100

50

Autumn
250

300

350

100

50

Summer
150

200

Autumn
250

300

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0
Spring

0.2

Standardised precipitation
Winter

200

Calendar day

Standardised precipitation
0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0

Calendar day

Summer
150

350

Winter
0

Calendar day
(a)

50

Spring
100

Summer
150

200

Autumn
250

300

350

Calendar day
(b)

Figure 5. Examples of seasonal pattern of extreme rainfall

occurrences (solid line) and mean rainfall occurrences (dashed line)
for (a) North Highlands and Islands and (b) southeast England; and

standardised extreme rainfall intensity (solid line) and mean daily

rainfall intensity (dashed line) for the same locations. Vertical lines
denote 1 March, 1 June, 1 September and 1 December

and with respect to future climate change. The principal

conclusions of relevance to flood risk management are as follows.

& The most extreme convective summer rainfall events are

& Extreme and very heavy rain days in the UK display a

&

&

&

&

distinctive seasonal pattern in the occurrences throughout

the year, with regional differences in the timing of the peak
period (refer to Figure 5 for examples).
The probability of extreme and very heavy rainfall events
within those peak periods is increasing, resulting in several
extreme rainfall events occurring in rapid succession.
The timing of the peak period is shifting towards more
autumnal extreme rainfall events from summer, in the
southeast of the UK, or winter, in the northwest of the UK.
The timing of the most intense rainfall events does not
necessarily coincide with their seasonal pattern of
occurrence. That is the annual maximum may occur earlier
in the summer or later in the winter, dependent on location,
than the period when most extreme daily rainfall events
tend to occur (refer to Figure 5).
The intensity of multi-day maxima is increasing over the
north and west of the UK; these changes are particularly
apparent in winter rainfall and emergent in spring and
autumn rainfall (Jones et al., 2013b; Maraun et al., 2008).

increasing in intensity, while moderately heavy to heavy

summer rainfall is decreasing slightly (Jones et al., 2013b).
& There is a strong dependency of UK extreme daily rainfall
on diurnal air temperature range and sea surface
temperature, which is likely to correspond with future
increases in frequency and intensity under climate change
(Jones et al., 2013a).

5.

Application to flood hydrology

Increases in the frequency or intensity of rainfall maxima are of

great consequence, dependent on the season, location and area
of risk. For instance, increases in autumn maxima may have
considerable impacts on surface runoff if rainfall events occur
after harvesting and lead to rural flooding and submerged
highway drainage systems. Summertime increases in event
intensity, particularly in combination with a hotter and drier
future climate, may have devastating impacts on future floods
where clay soils may be desiccated and unable to absorb rapid
moisture, leading to enhanced runoff. In any season, increased
urbanisation coupled with more intense rainfall will lead to
increases in urban flooding. Even where flooding may not be
an issue, an enhanced hydrological cycle will cause an increase
7

Forensic Engineering

Understanding the risks from

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Tye

0.30
Probability
0.20
0.10

0.20
Probability
0.10

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Peak day = 320 +/ 15

50

150
250
Calendar day

350

1920

1940

1960

1980

2000

1980

2000

(a)

0.10

Probability
0.20

19011925
19261951
19521976
19772000
20012009

Probability
0.10

1900

0.30

0.20

Peak day = 259 +/ 15

0

50

150
250
Calendar day

350

1900

1920

1940

1960

(b)

Figure 6. (Left) Examples of changes in the probability of extreme

rainfall throughout the year by 25-year period for (a) North
Highlands and Islands and (b) southeast England. Vertical lines
denote 1 March, 1 June, 1 September and 1 December. (Right)

Maximum annual probability of an extreme event (black line) and

smooth spline trend (dashed grey line) for (a) North Highlands and
Islands and (b) southeast England

in first flush pollution and so have a detrimental impact on

river water quality. The importance of diurnal air temperature
range and sea surface temperature confirms postulations that
future years will bring more intense and more frequent rainfall
(IPCC, 2013).

frequent and intense extreme rainfall will put piped sewerage

systems and enclosed waterways under further pressure and
lead to more frequent flooding.

Allowance for non-stationarity in regional rainfall or flood

estimates has been addressed by the research community, but is
far from common practice in hydrological design. Most
analyses of extreme rainfall have focused on traditional
extreme value analyses to estimate the likely return frequency
of specific events. Climate change adaptation plans are often
unclear with respect to projected changes in extreme rainfall as
climate models often underestimate extreme rainfall. The
statistical model described above can be used in combination
with climate projections to examine the seasonal and multiannual fluctuations in rainfall maxima, and quantify the likely
impacts from changes in extreme daily rainfall for use in
design. Examination of inter and intra-annual variability in
event frequency, timing of occurrences and intensity demonstrates that focusing only on traditional extreme value analyses
will lead to a less resilient flood protection system. Recent
research highlights that systems with limited storage are
vulnerable to clustering in extreme rainfall arrival, and so are
susceptible to failure. Projected climate changes of increasingly
8

It is no longer practicable to design empirically using tools

established over the past century and it is important to recognise
that there is not a one-size-fits-all solution for flood management. Improved resilience to current and future flooding
requires a range of flood management solutions that respond to
all sources and pathways of flooding, and, in particular, multiple
events within a short time. Such solutions will include more
traditional hard-engineered flood defences where appropriate or
necessary, but must also include innovative solutions such as
coastal realignment, rural integrated runoff management, and
greater use of sustainable urban drainage systems to attenuate
and store runoff. The latter bring their own challenges with
respect to the responsibility for maintenance, but also create
amenities such as enhanced recreational areas and wildlife
habitats. A further benefit is that these solutions are flexible,
allowing the solution for near or short-term impacts to be
expanded or altered as the climate and other challenges, for
example increased urbanisation, evolve.
All engineered systems are designed to withstand forces up to a
target level, beyond which failure is inevitable. However, given

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changes in extreme rainfall patterns, such an approach may no
longer be adequate or practical. Brown et al. (2012) advocate
assessing the likely consequences of credible changes in the
climate information used for design, then incorporating
flexibility to accommodate the impacts. Such an approach
requires collaboration to identify the sources of vulnerability,
potential mechanisms to improve resilience (The Royal Society,
2014). Some multi-disciplinary initiatives have been established
to facilitate research to improve societal resilience to extreme
weather, but these are often of finite duration due to funding
constraints (e.g. Crew, 2012; SmarTest, 2013). The Engineering
for Climate Extremes Partnership (ECEP, 2014) is a newly
formed interdisciplinary partnership bringing together engineering, scientific, cultural, business and government expertise to
develop robust, well-communicated predictions and advice on
the impacts of weather and climate extremes in support of
society. On-going collaborative research and knowledge dissemination are at the heart of this partnership to develop
resilient responses to current and future climate extremes.

News-releases/2014/01/Insurance-bill-for-storm-and-flooddamage-over-Christmas-2013-and-New-Year-period-setto-cost-426m (accessed 18/02/2014).

Adaptation Sub-Committee Secretariat (2014) Policy Note:
Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Spending.
Adaptation Sub-Committee Secretariat, London, UK.
Bloschl G and Montanari A (2010) Climate change impacts
throwing the dice? Hydrological Processes 24(3): 374381,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/hyp.7574.
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Information on the probable changes in extreme rainfall

frequency and intensity is urgently required by those designing
any permanent infrastructure, but is not currently available.
Enhancing climate projections for use in planning and decision
making requires a combination of higher resolution climate
models, together with improved statistical approaches and greater
understanding of the processes driving extreme weather events.
By characterising the drivers for use in statistical downscaling, it is
possible to improve projections of future extreme rainfall and
hence the reliability of information used in design. Presenting this
information in a useable format for engineers and other decision
makers is of primary importance, and is the focus of on-going
research and outreach programmes. In this regard, ECEP offers
an opportunity to interact more fully with, and improve dialogue
between, the engineering and science communities.

Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

Acknowledgements
This work was part of a Natural Environment Research Councilfunded postgraduate research studentship NE/G523498/1 (20082012). The National Center for Atmospheric Research is
sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF); this work
was also partially supported by NSF EASM grant S1048841.
With many thanks to Hayley Fowler, Chris Kilsby and Stephen
Blenkinsop who supervised the postgraduate research, and to
Greg Holland and James Done for discussions that helped to
improve this paper. Thanks are also due to Michael Duda, Ming
Ge and Terri Hamner for assistance with illustrations.
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