Flood Defence and Coastal Erosion Risk Engineering
Flood River Engineer, Flood Defence Engineer, Coastal Engineer, Geomorphologist, Flood Warning Officer, Strategic Planning Engineer, Economist
The Sector
Flooding and coastal erosion have serious consequences. It is estimated that 8% (10,000 square kilometres) of the total land area in England and 1.8 million properties are at risk from flooding. If existing flood defences were allowed to fall into disrepair, Defra estimates the consequent annual economic damage would increase from £1 billion to £3 billion per year.
Coastal defence generally involves many disciplines to model, predict and manage the evolution of the coastline and estuaries. Flood risk management also has a broad discipline base to predict and manage the risk of flooding, including engineering elements such as shoreline and riverbank structures, dredging and support services.
The nature of the water’s edge and its valuable and scarce habitats requires a strong emphasis on sustainability and links the sector with the environmental impact assessment sector.
Sector Profile
About 4,000 professionals and 2,200 river and land drainage operatives are employed in the sector. 3000 are employed by the Environment Agency (EA), as the largest single authority carrying out flood defence work in England and Wales. The EA maintains a limited design capacity and nearly all of its new work and strategic analyses are contracted out to engineering consultants and contractors.
Although the professional sector is growing at 10% per annum, there is a severe skills shortage. To address this problem, the EA is opening up the profession to those with backgrounds outside of traditional route civil engineering and offering the training needed to reach chartered status.
Issues and Trends
Climate change is the single greatest issue being addressed at present; sea level rise and changes in weather patterns will have a marked impact according to research such as the Foresight Future Flooding report. Flood and coastal erosion risk management is becoming a high priority political issue. The Government is investing in research and development identifying and exploiting developing flood and coastal defence technology, and ensuring that future activities are based on good science.
In 50 years, the risk of flooding is predicted to rise from one flood a century to one every ten years, so flood defence against the impact of climate change is a huge concern.
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