Conferences are better by water

On the 7 and 8 June 2018, we were thrilled to welcome 25 early career hydrologists to our offices in Leeds for the annual British Hydrological Society (BHS) Peter Wolf Symposium.

Day 1 included key note speakers from JBA, University of Leeds and the Canal & River Trust, along with presentations from hydrologists sharing their work with a friendly audience. See the symposium webpage for further details of the programme and speakers. Congratulations to Josh Wells (Nottingham Trent University) who won the award for best presentation, talking about Natural Flood Risk Management.

This was followed by an early evening drinks reception in the city centre, where academic posters were displayed. Rosie Hampson (JBA Consulting) won the prize for best poster, with the theme “Storm Desmond: Tyne Valley Recovery”. The evening concluded with a World Oceans Day quiz and dinner.

Day 2 was more hands on, starting with an interactive session with JBA Trust who has created a suite of physical models to demonstrate key principles of flood and coastal risk management, and delegates were able to see some in action.

These included:

• the Augmented Reality (AR) Sandbox, an interactive visualisation tool showing how topography affects water moving through a catchment
• a ‘mini' flume to demonstrate the interaction of engineered structures with flow in a channel
• a Physical Augmented Relief Model (PARM) of Keswick. You can find out more about JBA Trust and their models here

Leeds City Council then presented about their flagship flood alleviation scheme, which officially opened in October 2017. It is the first in the UK to use moveable weirs for flood risk reduction purposes. After viewing some features on foot, the day then concluded with a pleasant boat trip to Knostrop weir downstream, which included an informative Q & A session about the scheme and future plans. Some of the delegates also enjoyed their very first experience of going through a lock before heading home.