Impact case study database

(a) Public and consulting outreach (England and Scotland): The Wetropolis flood demonstrator has been showcased to circa 1000 members of the public in the UK [A,B]. Wetropolis was first showcased as outreach at the second general assembly of the Maths Foresees network, 5-7 September 2016, Edinburgh. As part of this outreach project and such showcasings, Bokhove has given several public lectures [B], including at the Science of Floods workshop in Hebden Bridge (24-05-2016), Churchtown flood-action group workshop (28-01-2017), Flood & Coast 2019 conference (bespoke conference mainly for and by non-academic flood professionals), Telford, UK; and during a nine-day Mathematics of Planet Earth (MPE) Science exhibition at Imperial College (15-23 February 2020) with “ hundreds of visitors per day” [A(1)]. “ The French counterpart at Centre de Science, Orleans [showing several other exhibits] would like to make the exhibit into a permanent feature of the MPE exhibitions and they are proposing to produce a copy of Wetropolis to be presented around the world” [A(1)] (although it concerns a future action, the previous quote is included to corroborate a positive response). Visitors to the exhibition left positive feedback , e.g. “Very nice to see numbers in action!” [A(1)]; “What a wonderful and insightful exhibition” (an MP) [A(1)]. A letter from Hydrotec Consultants [A(2)] Ltd states: “ During the development of Wetropolis II, Hydrotec contributed in-kind effort to augment that put in by the University of Leeds. ... The release of Wetropolis II has also promoted the skills and versatility of Hydrotec within the wider water-treatment industry”.

(b) Educational innovation (Netherlands): Wetropolis made possible the Efro EU project “ Wetropolis: interactive, tangible models for education and water management” in The Netherlands [H], a project involving various SMEs. The project has developed educational tools that are either inspired by, or directly based on, Wetropolis [4,Appendix of H(1)]: “ *Inspired by the Wetropolis-Leeds mathematical and physical models, a project was defined to use the Wetropolis-approach for water-management issues in the Netherlands. A grant was provided by EU-EFRO (https://www.op\-oost.eu/Overzicht\-beschikte\-projecten\) for the WetropolisRD project, involving academic partners and several SME’s. Based on the original Wetropolis demonstrator, new ways were investigated to produce scale models for local or foreign water management issues and introduce this approach in education and outreach-projects for public understanding. ... The methods to produce these models have been tested in the classroom (in the academic year 2019-2020). The methods will be further developed to certified lessons for NLT.*” In addition [H, translated from the original Dutch]: “ *First, the project has inspired the building of bespoke physical models [cf. our Wetropolis model] by a team of pupils/students in the education that the Pre-U [program] of the University of Twente undertakes in collaboration with four high schools in the Eastern part of The Netherlands. The approach has proven successful and has been presented to a national conference with 180 schools which offer the optional module Nature, Life and Technology (NLT).*” See also publication in Dutch journal on secondary education [H(2)].

(c) Influencing policy (France): Following the extreme and fatal 2015 flooding of the River Brague, Antibes, France [1], French civil engineers (at the University of Grenoble, France) have independently used and continue to use [C] the new diagnostic tool [1,2] discussed in Section 2 together with stakeholders [D] in a flood-mitigation-planning work package [E] for the River Brague. The work package is part of the EU network NAIAD (Nature Insurance Value: Assessment and Demonstration) [E]. The French civil engineers developed the methodology [1] for the River Brague case and independently influenced flood-planning policy [D] for the municipality [text removed for publication], France.

The French civil engineers are co-authors of [1,2] and providers of corroboration [C(1)], in which latter role they act as “impact intermediaries” for this component of the case study: they write in [C(1)], dated 30-08-2019: “ Prof. Bokhove and his colleagues Prof. Mark Kelmanson and Dr. Thomas Kent shared with us their idea of the decision aid framework they developed with the Flood Excess Volume analysis. We implemented it on a case study in the south of France (Brague River at Antibes) within the H2020 EU granted project NAIAD (http://naiad2020.eu/\)” and “ The method results were presented during several public meeting [sic] , e.g., on Dec. 18^th, 2018 to a panel of stakeholders and citizens of the catchment, Feb. 12^th, 2019 to the Water Agency (AE-RMC) and on Mar. 28^th, 2019 to the regional authority in charge of risk and environment management (DDTM 06). Every time, the approach was well received and all stakeholders, from various background [sic] , agree that it helps understanding the magnitude of the flood and the efficacy of the strategy proposed. All these stakeholders agreed that the framework provides very clear and directly applicable elements for helping decision and raising citizen awareness on mitigation measure efficacy. It is definitely a useful tool”.

(d) Influencing policy (Slovenia): The tool developed in [1,2] is also being used by French and Italian civil engineers in collaboration with Slovenian stakeholders regarding flooding in Ljubljana of the Glinščica river, Slovenia [F(1)]. The Slovenian stakeholder is the NGO Instituto Revivo (www.ozivimo.si\) together with City Municipality of Ljubljana : “… After the stakeholder workshop, an effort was made to collect feedback from the stakeholders, including their appreciation of the FEV model outputs. While the ethical rules of the NAIAD project prevent us from sharing individual responses, they confirm that our target stakeholders belonging to the City Municipality of Ljubljana not only trust and understand the results, but also plan to use them in their future activities” [F(1)]; the NGO received assistance from Italy: “ The FEV-based methodology described e.g. by Bokhove et al. (2019, River Research and Applications) has been applied in the Glinščica for a twofold reason: … (ii) to facilitate stakeholder participation to the co-design process” and “The adopted approach definitely helped, according to the feedbacks provided by the participant, improving the quality of the whole decision-making process” [F(2)].

(e) Local flood-evacuation planning (West Yorkshire, England). Nascent research, ultimately appearing in [2] and subsequently reported in [5], gave an estimate (embedded in river-level data and in-situ observations) of the flood threshold height that was used to initiate a bespoke flood-action plan [G(2)] for the business CrossFit Leeds in Kirkstall, Leeds. The nascent plan was effectively employed during the 2015 Boxing Day Flood of the River Aire and saved CrossFit more than GBP 20,000 [G(1)], since they were able to act in good time on warnings provided by Bokhove: CrossFit “ saved over 20,000 pounds worth of gym equipment (including 10 Concept2 rowing machines each worth more than 1,000 pounds). That successful evacuation (as well as the fast clean-up effort by the entire membership) enabled CrossFit Leeds to open relatively soon in January 2016, thus saving the business from a significant loss of income” [G(1)].

The plan was subsequently formalised on 29-12-2015 [G(2)], in which form it was used on 09-02-2020 by CrossFit during Storm Ciara, although in this case the evacuation of CrossFit on 09-02-2020 transpired not to be necessary, since the water stopped approximately 0.1m below the floor level of the premises. CrossFit reported that they shared the plan and timings with nearby businesses (some of which were flooded) who found these useful during Storm Ciara [G(1)].

(f) Improving public understanding of science (UK): J. Rand has cited reference [3], which fed into [2], in a comment in New Scientist [I] regarding UK Government misconceptions that beaver dams can provide serious flood protection: “ Onno Bokhove and colleagues calculated that about 8500 beaver colonies would have been needed along parts of the River Aire in West Yorkshire, UK, to have coped with the Boxing Day floods of 2015” [I] and “ Beavers are lovely in themselves and we should celebrate their reintroduction, but let's not get carried away and encourage government to think they are a cheap flood prevention solution” [I].