Quantitative assessment methods for the monitoring and inspection of flood defences: new techniques and recent developments

Flooding and the damage it causes to people, property, the environment and the economy are major concerns worldwide. The effects of flooding are likely to grow due to increased pressure on land use and changes in rainfall and sea level caused by climate change. Effective flood risk management (FRM) is important to mitigate the effects of flooding in the UK and internationally. Recent flooding events in the UK and internationally highlight these potentially disastrous and devastating effects. This publication aims to provide guidance to those involved in the management and operation of flood defence assets on how their asset monitoring programmes might be improved through the collection and analysis of quantitative asset data. It seeks to give an approach to condition assessment that can provide an increased accuracy over purely visual inspection without significant overall increases in assessment cost by the inclusion of remotely sensed datasets and quantitative survey data. Part of a suite of four CIRIA guides (C717, C719, C720, C721).