Seventh International Conference on Flood Management

From 05 to 07 September, water@leeds hosted the International Conference on Flood Management (ICFM7)at the University of Leeds. The conference, on the theme of ‘Resilience to Global Changes – Anticipating the Unexpected,’ boasted 172 presentations from researchers and industry alongside keynote speeches from Prof. Chris Zevenbergen, Prof. Koji Ikeuchi, Dr Gero Michel, Dr Paul Whitfield, Mr John Curtin, and Mr Haibin Wan, as well as a poster session, a cultural programme, and a variety of exhibits and stands in the main conference hall. The event was attended by around 300 flood experts from across the world.

The conference programme was supplemented by a programme of cultural events, including Steve Bottoms' performance of his one-man play Too Much of Water, and showings of the short films, High Water Common Ground by Andy Clark, and Geoff Brokate and Paula Sutherland's Calder. The conference exhibition space contained stalls from sponsors alongside displays of work from water@leeds' Artist in Residence Dr Joanna Brown; the community exhibition, Flood Response, which was co-curated by the people of Leeds and provided to ICFM7 by the Leeds Industrial Museum at Armley Mills; demonstrations of JBA Trust's flume and wave tanks, and their augmented reality sandbox; a Projection Augmented Relief Model (PARM) display of Keswick demonstrated by Gary Priestnall of the University of Nottingham; and the opportunity to test virtual reality as a means of displaying flood data with Slanted Theory.

The event was made possible by the generous contributions of our sponsors. Arup and water@leeds provided platinum sponsorship; IBS Group provided gold sponsorship; Aquobex, Mott MacDonald, Polypipe, Tempcon, and UWE Bristol silver sponsorship. Local sponsorship was received from JBA Consulting and Weetwood, while exhibition sponsorship came from Arts Council England and Leeds Museums and Galleries.

The event was reported by local news programme On the Aire.