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With the near-catastrophic breaching of the Toddbrook reservoir fresh in mind, more than 3,000 flood prevention and mitigation professionals converged on Birmingham’s NEC in mid-September for Flood Expo 2019.
Organised by Prysm Group and billed as the world’s the world’s leading exhibition and conference of its type, the event lived up to its claim by attracting more than 100 exhibitors and by mounting a conference with 150 expert speakers on topics ranging from using AI in flood prediction to tackling multi-dimensional challenges within flood-affected communities.
While hardware was on show in abundance, from flood barriers to pumps to sensors, geo-based solutions were also represented. Europa Technologies once again highlighted its address-level flood analytics solutions, now available to public sector organisations via G-Cloud 11. Having already picked up a clutch of awards this year from the Esri User Conference in San Diego and from the British Cartographic Society, the company was pipped to the post for Flood Expo’s Innovation Award by an entry submitted by What3Words. The latter’s smartphone location-finding app, described by the BBC as ‘The app that can save your life’, has already been adopted by 73 blue light organisations across the UK.
Other exhibitors with geo-based products and services included ICS Consulting which took the opportunity to launch inFRA, a 2D flood risk assessment solution that utilises the results of expert research conducted by the University of Exeter’s Centre for Water Systems; Previsico with its FloodMap Live modelling tool for surface water, fluvial and coastal flood modelling. This most recently won the ‘Commercial Potential’ award at Loughborough University’s bi-annual Enterprise Awards; Storm Geomatics which mounted live demos of its GeoRiver® software for fast river model creations. A collaboration between Storm Geomatics and JBA Consulting, the software is claimed to improve the speed, complexity and quality of data that is streaming into hydraulic models, thereby improving flood mapping and reducing flooding. Not least, the University of Sheffield presented the latest developments in SEAMLESS-WAVE, an intelligent and holistic framework that can drastically reduce iterations in building and testing flood models for optimal settings.
Flood Expo will again take place on 16-17 September 2020 at the NEC, Birmingham. More on the event at www.thefloodexpo.co.uk
