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September 2024
Hydrotec & Engineering Consultants assisted with a flood risk assessment and drainage strategy study for a planning application at Whitby Business Park, Enterprise Way including the accommodation capacity assessment of the drainage network systems using industry standard InfoWorks ICM modelling tools.   
 
 
 
 
 
October 2022
Hydrotec & Engineering Consultants assisted with a flood risk assessment and surface water drainage strategy to secure a planning application for residential development at Castelnau, London.  
October 2021
Hydrotec & Engineering Consultants (HEC) assisted with a flood risk assessment and surface water drainage strategy design for dwelling houses in Kings langley. 
July 2021

Hydrotec & Engineering Consultants (HEC) provided the surface water drainage strategy for SuDS for commercial developments in Ridgmont, Bedford.

June 2021

Hydrotec & Engineering Consultants (HEC) assisted with an FRA and surface water drainage strategy design for residential developments at Coalburn, Lanark.

June 2020

Hydrotec & Engineering Consultants (HEC) assisted with an FRA, surface water drainage and 1D-2D hydraulic modelling (direct rainfall) investigation for a blue-green infrastructure development project in Glasgow.

April 2020

Hydrotec & Engineering Consultants (HEC) assisted with an FRA and 1D-2D hydraulic modelling study for planning permission of 9 residential developments in Burton.

 

 

 

December 2019

Hydrotec & Engineering Consultants (HEC)  provided soil percolation tests to assist in the sustainable drainage design of residential development in Powys.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

March 2019

Hydrotec & Engineering Consultants (HEC) assisted with the flood risk assessment and drainage impact assessment for the planning permission of the residential developments in Dulwich and Middlesex.

January 2018
 
An Aspect of Climate Change
Dr Mahmud Ahsan

These days the topic of climate change is widely used in all spectrums of communities. What is “CLIMATE CHANGE”! The different people of different backgrounds in diverse communities describe it in different ways based on their knowledge and experience and could be influenced by their capabilities. I think the answer could be found if we try to search for the answer to what is “HUMAN RIGHTS”!

Climate change is not a local issue and what is utilised now, assuming adverse to climate change in any part of the region, will not necessarily be the outcome very soon - some actions might be years even decades later. In many cases, we might know or predict the probable impact of the present day’s human activities but because of the individual, regional and national interests and political influence, we dare to promote it.   

The natural disasters in recent years particularly in the developed nations (while it would never be known the consequences in far remote and under-developed regions) have frequently become a national headline and headache for the policymakers to keep society stable. Consequently, they change some policies for so-called future mitigations and adaptations.

One of the obvious questions would rise that we all have good intentions but do not have enough resources for better solutions for all. This is complete garbage and has a look at 100 years or 200 years back. Our science and technology are now from finer to finest but have we tried to utilize them the way we should?

Many infrastructure projects designed today need to be satisfied with the “value for money” – such as how it would benefit societies and communities. So, the project manager should make a long report and presentation for the donors to make them happy – how the project manager would get a degree of confidence in the project which is beneficial to the communities. In other words, what is the probability of the capability of the individual responsible for delivering his/her tasks; what is the probability of the quality of each tool used for the expected solutions by the individual and the integration of each solution; and finally, what is the credibility of the methods. So, we get a mini symptom of complex climate change. If the project does not produce what is designed for then who/what is to be blamed - individual, methodology, tools, scientific theory, the sincerity of management or something else! Project failure is not obviously value for money but a smart manager would say “lesson is learned”. 

Just looking back in the last ten years – many regional and global effects of floods, drought, cyclones, bush fire and flu epidemics etc forced the leaders/policymakers to change the policy to mitigate these effects in the future. At the local level, it produces tick-box lists with or without knowing the adverse effects. But local experts with greater freedom could produce the best possible sustainable solution which might be integrated into the regional scale. 

Finally, no individual person or country can control the climate change effect, and no one wants to sacrifice the comfort of modern life, but each one has a responsibility from his/her own position to minimize its effect while promoting sustainable growth. Thus, a true and sincere individual who believes in himself/herself and fights for the right without any scare becomes an icon for a generation.

September 2017

Hydrotec and Engineering Consultants provided the specialised technical services to deliver the following projects:

Carlisle Project Appraisal Study: Optioneering investigations (Flood Modeller-Tuflow) were conducted in Carlisle City, Low Crosby and Warwick Bridge in order to eliminate flood risks which are a part of the Carlisle Project Appraisal Study of Environment Agency.

Eamont Bridge Project Appraisal Study: 1D-2D hydraulic modelling (Flood modeller-Tuflow) investigations were conducted to eliminate flood risk at Firefighter Charity and to protect Eamont Bridge from scouring including the replacement of Low Mill weir with a new rapid structure.

Marry Port Project Appraisal Study: 1D hydraulic modelling investigation was conducted to eliminate flood risk at Marry port as a part of the Project Appraisal Study of Environment Agency.

Carlisle Scheme Performance Review: Detailed assessments of post-December 2015 floods in Carlisle were conducted with 1D-2D hydrodynamic models to evaluate the performance of the existing defences in Carlisle and the standard of protection. In these investigations, new topographic survey data of all defences including key structures in 1D and 2D domains were applied. The hydrological data at the different extreme events were also updated. Modelling studies for both defended and undefended scenarios were made for the strategic flood mapping outlines of the Environment Agency.

Keswick and Cockermouth Scheme Performance Review: 1D-2D hydrodynamic modelling studies were undertaken after extreme floods in December 2015 to evaluate the performance of the defences in Keswick and Cockermouth, Cumbria. In these investigations, new survey data of the 1D channel and defences were applied. The updated hydrological data at the different extreme events including December 2015 event were also used. Modelling studies for both defended and undefended scenarios were made for the strategic flood mapping outlines of the Environment Agency.

March 2017

Hydrotec and Engineering Consultants Ltd provided specialised technical services to the following projects:

Hawick Flood Prevention Scheme: Detailed 1D-2D hydrodynamic modelling investigations were conducted with several optioneering of defence structures for the flood prevention scheme. These studies would enhance additional protections of the properties and various important assets from the extreme hydrological events in Hawick.

Standard of Protection for Marlow Flood Alleviation Scheme: The detailed assessment and analysis for the standard of protection at 1% annual exceedance probability of the fluvial hydrological event were made with 1D hydrodynamic modelling (Flood Modeller) tools. These investigations include the review of the existing hydrodynamic and hydrological modelling studies and refining and updating the model, particularly in the upper Thames region for the suitability of the proposed flood defence walls.

Grangemouth Flood Prevention Scheme: 1D-2D (Flood Modeller) mathematical modelling studies were performed to investigate flood risk assessment and flood prevention from the fluvial and tidal effects. These studies were performed with new topographical survey data of 1D channel and 2D floodplains including the various existing and proposed defences.

May 2015

Hydrotec and Engineering Consultants Ltd provided technical expertise to deliver the following very high-quality projects for flood mapping outlines, flood forecasting and flood risk assessment:

 

Carlisle Flood Mapping Outlines: Flood risk assessments of Carlisle city and its surrounding areas were investigated using detailed 1D-2D hydrodynamic models. Model runs were performed to develop flood mapping outlines for the fluvial hydrological events ranging from 5yr to 1000yr return periods including the various option scenarios for defended and undefended conditions. 

 

Carlisle Flood Forecasting Model: A detailed flood forecasting model for Carlisle was developed and assessed for a range of fluvial hydrological events. This model would help the local authority to provide a reliable flood warning in an efficient and effective manner in Carlisle city and its surrounding areas.

 

Stanlow Flood Risk Assessment: A detailed 1D-2D hydrodynamic model was developed to investigate the flood risk in Stanlow.  Flood risk investigations were made with various hydrological options including joint probability assessments of tidal and wave overtopping at the embankment ranging from 10yr to 1000yr return periods, embankment breach etc.

 

Tranmere Flood Risk Assessment: A detailed 2D hydrodynamic model was developed to investigate the flood risk in Tranmere with various hydrological conditions including joint probability assessments of tidal and wave overtopping of the embankment ranging from 10yr to 1000yr return periods.

 

 

August 2014

 

In recent days, because of many incidents and electronic media reports, people are asking about better solutions for a project work whether it is hydraulic modelling, water quality modelling or any numerical modelling tasks. But it is important to note that the quality of the work depends not only on the better numerical tools but also on users' knowledge and understanding of the numerical methods and physics of the problems. Recently, one of the renowned experts in hydraulic engineering Professor Forest Holly gave a presentation at the 10th International Conference on Hydroscience and Engineering, November 2012, University of Central Florida, Florida, USA. In his research, he clearly pictured the disadvantages of modern computing facilities if it goes to the wrong persons. He also presented some documents to demonstrate how his great-great-uncle worked as a professional engineer over a hundred years ago and the application of his scientific and mathematical knowledge. Below is the abstract of Prof Holly’s paper.

 

 

RESPONSIBLE USE OF MODELING SOFTWARE – WHERE DOES THE BUCK STOP?

Forrest M. Holly Jr.

Consultant and Adjunct Professor, Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, 85721, USA  

 

Harry Truman became US President when Franklin Roosevelt suddenly died in office in 1945. He inherited not only WorldWar II in its later stages, but also the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb (about which he had not even been briefed). And yet Truman is the one who gave the order to use the atomic bomb to end the war in the Pacific. He famously kept a sign on his desk saying “The buck stops here”, meaning there was nobody else to whom he could pass on the responsibility for tough decisions.

 

The buck often stops on the desk of engineers, especially those who are professionally licensed, who have a solemn obligation to protect and promote the health, safety, and welfare of the public. Yet as the gap between developers and users of simulation models in computational hydroscience grows ever wider, educators and managers are challenged to provide young engineers with the knowledge, tools, and attitudes needed to validate the software that may be the basis of their engineering decisions and designs. Where does the buck stop? Can the technician pass the buck to his or her supervising engineer? Can that engineer pass the buck to his or her supervisor?

 

Can they all pass the buck to the software developer? Can the developer of object-oriented software pass the buck to those who developed the individual objects? Who is in charge of assuring the validity and integrity of the software?

 

In modern undergraduate civil engineering curricula in the US, emphasis on fundamentals is progressively giving way to training in the “soft skills” of communication, teamwork, leadership, etc. This recognition of the importance of the soft skills is long overdue and appropriate – and mandated by the expectations for accreditation. And it is natural for training in the use of new tools to fade away as those tools enter into routine use. For example, engineering curricula once included training in the use of the slide rule; then in the use of the handheld calculator; then in the use of  spreadsheets, word processors, etc. It would be laughable today to give academic credit for such courses, since those tools have become so routine, and since the skills to use them are acquired by students either in high school or through peer collaboration.

 

In the 1970s and 1980s undergraduate engineering curricula typically included credit-bearing courses in numerical methods and computer programming, important fundamentals for the informed use of simulation codes. Yet these courses have also largely fallen by the wayside since engineers with an undergraduate degree will very likely be expected to use industrial modeling software, rather than develop their own simulation systems.

 

In his Hunter Rouse Award lecture at the ASCE Hydraulics Division Specialty Conference in New Orleans in 1989, Prof. Jim Liggett said that he insisted on including computer programming in the curriculum to ensure that students have a sense of what can go wrong. I believe this statement is as timely and relevant today as it was in 1989 – the disappearance of programming in the curriculum to ensure that students have a sense of what can go wrong. I believe this statement is as timely and relevant today as it was in 1989 – the disappearance of programming courses notwithstanding. There is a huge gap in an awareness of what can go wrong between the community of users of industrialized software systems, and the developers of such systems. Developers have learned (often through bitter The 10th Int. Conf. on Hydroscience and Engineering (ICHE-2012), Nov. 4 – Nov. 8, Orlando, FL, USA 7 experience) to validate the integrity of their codes through checking fundamentals – conservation of mass, respect of momentum and energy conservation principles, self-consistent adherence to flow relations for hydraulic devices and structures, etc. Yet by and large, the user community has not been educated to do such checking, and it is unlikely that managers of projects with inevitably tight budgets are willing to allocate funds to check the fundamentals of simulation systems, especially proprietary ones that may represent significant investment. Yet where does the buck stop if functional but faulty software leads to a flawed, and perhaps dangerous, design? (Murphy’s Law has not been disproved….) Does the software user have the attitude and skills to know what to check and how to check it? Obviously one cannot expect the user to rigorously validate that the complete partial differential equations are being correctly solved in a complex model bathymetry and topology in unsteady flow conditions. But one should expect the user to perform spot-check validation calculations to validate that basic hydraulic principles are satisfied where it is possible, i.e. to “look for trouble” in the results that are amenable to checking (e.g. mass conservation), and from this infer likely validity of the results that are not so amenable (e.g. unsteady momentum conservation).

 

An example in my own recent experience has been observing the application of three alternative industrial river modeling systems to a steep river having multiple cross-channel weirs for erosion control. The applications were being performed by international post-graduate students in hydroinformatics. The students were given pre-prepared model data sets, including “weir coefficients”. Observing significantly different water-surface elevations above weirs in the three modeling systems, most students concluded that some random perturbation or numerical instability or perhaps some other black magic was responsible for the differences. None of the students, even those with previous off-campus experience, had the inclination to return to fundamentals – to seek out the weir equations used in each modeling system from its documentation, to validate those equations from their own education and experience, and to identify what was the “weir coefficient” required in the data sets. Yet the systems used three different forms of the weir equation, in each of which the “weir coefficient” had quite different values based on different physical and dimensional identity!

 

In recent postgraduate short-course offerings in computational hydroscience, I have given much more emphasis to “how do we check this result” than to “what are the numerical methods and their formal convergence and stability properties”. I have also taught that whether or not one discovers an issue of concern in such detailed checking, the very act of digging into the results and processing the numbers deepens the user’s quantitative and intuitive understanding and feel for the behavior of the hydraulic system being studied.

 

So – in a world in which education in the fundamentals is giving way to education in the soft skills, how can undergraduate students acquire the attitude and skills that will lead them to become responsible users of industrialized software? If we do not expect the engineer to have such attitude and skills, why not then relegate the use of industrialized software systems to technicians, who generally have less education in the fundamentals, and can be billed out at a lower rate? What does it mean to be an engineer rather than a technician in the context of model use in computational hydroscience? What is the role of engineering education when software tools do most of the analytical work? Where does the buck stop?

 

I do not have ready answers to these questions, and the issue is surely more complex than my simplified summary of it. But as our profession continues its headlong rush to reliance on sophisticated modeling tools for designs that may directly impact public health, safety, and welfare, how do we prepare the engineer to be not just a user, but a responsible user?

 

 

July 2014

 

Govt Advisors: Buildings and infrastructure ill-prepared for changing climate in the UK

 

The Adaptation Sub-Committee of the Committee on Climate Change said that the resilience of transport networks, homes, hospitals and water supplies in England need to be enhanced to counter the more frequent and severe flooding and heatwaves that can be expected in future. This is the key finding of a new report by the government’s official adviser on preparing for climate change.

 

The storms of last winter highlighted the costs, damages and disruption that extreme weather can cause to homes, businesses and vital services. The Committee found that positive action is being taken to avoid future disruption to power supplies, and to some extent to train services, that could arise from severe weather. In other areas plans were found to be lacking. Infrastructure providers could not always explain how storms and flooding had affected their services in the past, or what steps have been taken to address potential vulnerabilities.

The Committee recommends that the comprehensive approach put in place by the power sector to protect their networks from severe weather should be adopted by water companies, for major roads, ports and airports, and by telecommunications providers.

 

 

Investing in flood defence to avoid future damage

 

The Adaptation Sub-Committee of the Committee on Climate Change said that the past investment in flood defences, and recent improvements in forecasting, early warning and flood emergency planning, helped limit the impacts of the tidal surge in December 2013 – the largest in sixty years. These efforts must be stepped up to prevent more damage in future as sea levels rise and development in the floodplain continues.

Limited budgets mean that three-quarters of existing flood defence structures are not being adequately maintained. Regulations to avoid surface water flooding caused by new development should be introduced, after repeated delay. This was recommended six years ago by the Pitt Review.

More must also be done by local councils to manage local flood risk. They should make sure that statutory local flood risk management plans and strategies are published, and agreed actions are taken. They should also enforce rules to avoid continuing loss of gardens to hard surfacing.

 

Lord John Krebs, Chair of the Adaptation Sub-Committee of the Committee on Climate Change, said:

“The impacts of climate change on the UK in the decades ahead are likely to include rising sea levels, more flooding, summer heatwaves, and perhaps more frequent storms and droughts.

“We have found good evidence of positive action being taken in a number of areas to safeguard public health and the economy from the impacts of climate change. Despite the disruption experienced by many in the storms this winter, the impacts would have been much worse if it hadn’t been for past investment in flood defences, and in flood forecasting and emergency planning. This is a clear demonstration of the benefits that result from investing in greater resilience, but there is no room for complacency.

“As our report highlights, there is more to be done to counter the increasing risks of severe weather that are likely to be associated with climate change. As well as making vital infrastructure services more resilient to flooding and storms, the country needs to adapt homes and other buildings so they are suitable for higher summer temperatures.”

 

Professor David Balmforth, Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) Flood Expert and Vice President, said:

“The Committee rightly highlights the growing need for a more comprehensive approach to UK flood resilience, particularly one that better reflects interdependencies – or the “domino effect” that can be felt across energy, transport, water and waste networks when a flood defence is overwhelmed. This disruption results in an even greater impact on society and the economy.”

 

May 2014

 

Flooding and coastal change - Planning applications: assessing flood risk

 

Environment agency recently published flood risk assessment guidelines as part of a planning application. It is very helpful not only for the consultants but also for the developer for understanding of the needs for the planning permission of a development site. More details information can be found in the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs and Environment Agency. Link on https://www.gov.uk/planning-applications-assessing-flood-risk

 

 

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