Environment Agency's Oxford-Cambridge Arc Flood Risk Investment Study
- Oliver Ashton
- Aug 14
- 3 min read
Updated: Sep 30
“Flood Platform's capabilities continue to expand, empowering our teams to achieve more with less effort. By streamlining routine analysis tasks, it accelerates project timelines and ensures consistency across all our deliverables. The visualisation features within Flood Platform mean our teams can complete many routine analysis tasks even quicker than before, as well as drive consistency in deliverables across our projects.”
Liam Durr, Environment Agency Mapping & Modelling Framework Manager, Jacobs
Key Facts
25% of the region’s land area is currently at risk of flooding, with annual damages estimated at £1.06 billion.
There are 5,710km of rivers and streams across the region, spanning three large river catchments: the Thames, the Nene, and the Ouse.
Over the next 100 years, annual average damage could increase to between 2 and 5 times its current value if there is no new investment in flood risk management.
900 models configured and 45,000 simulations run.
A vision for long-term flood resilience
The Oxford to Cambridge Flood Risk Investment Study (FRIS) is a pilot project within the Environment Agency's adaptive approaches portfolio. It explores how long-term investment in flood resilience can support sustainable development, protect communities and unlock economic potential.
Currently, around a quarter of the region is at risk, with 83,000 homes and critical infrastructure exposed to flood hazards. If no action is taken, the current day annual damages from flooding could nearly double by 2050, from £1.94 billion today to £3.91 billion, posing a serious challenge to the region's growth and resilience.
The client needed to plan investment in flood management across three major river catchments to enable the construction of 1,000,000 houses and unlock over £100 billion of economic growth over the next generation. Therefore, the programme needed to account for changes in risk over time and optimise investment, requiring more than 45,000 simulations and 900 models to be run for a range of return periods, climate futures, and scenarios.
Flood Modelling & Analysis
The modelling process involved a fully automated workflow encompassing model building, simulation, and post-processing phases. Over 700 Flood Modeller and TUFLOW linked hydraulic models were constructed and integrated, leveraging global computational resources for efficiency and scale. The outcome was a well-organised and comprehensive simulation library, allowing streamlined access to results and facilitating further insight development through Flood Platform's powerful visualisation tools.
Flood Platform's simulation and analysis capabilities were utilised to precisely configure the 900 models of the study catchment and run the 45,000 simulations to test different scenarios and climate futures. Post-processing of results was automatically undertaken, enabling the rapid identification of an optimised investment plan that maximised benefits and avoided constructing flood defence assets before they were required. Due to the high number of models and simulations, the modelling data needed to be stored in a central repository that was easily accessible to the team, whilst ensuring the data remained accurate, reliable, and discoverable.
Summary
Optimising investment under 18 possible futures revealed the optimum present value level of investment to be £5.63 billion over the 100-year study period. Depending on how climate change and development affect risk in future, the optimal present value investment could be between £4.63 and £6.20 billion.
The analysis results indicate a significant investment of £2.11 billion that is likely to be cost-effective across all potential future scenarios. Since these interventions prove beneficial in every scenario, the value of this investment is maximised when it is made in the first decade.
