One issue of contention about the proposed flood relief scheme for Oxford has been the question whether alternative “natural” approaches are a viable alternative.
To explore this topic we organised a symposium, held on March 26, in collaboration with the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford.
A summary of the event plus copies of the speakers’ slides are now on our website http://oxfordfloodalliance.org.uk/news-2/ post of 3 April.
The conclusion was that while natural flood management techniques can have an impact in specific local situations, isolated interventions upstream from Oxford will have no measurable impact on flood peaks at the catchment level.
To achieve any real benefit for the city and residential areas downstream there would need to be a massive transformation of the catchment landscape, and even then the impact would be only a 10-15 per cent reduction in the peak level.
Intervention on such a scale would require major policy change and would take decades to achieve. Natural flood management approaches cannot provide an alternative to the Oxford Flood Relief Scheme but they could, if implemented on a large enough scale, help to offset the expected impact of worsening climate change in years to come.
SIMON COLLINGS
Oxford Flood Alliance
South Street
Oxford
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