MBE for flood risk Special Professor

PA 172/09 - A University of Nottingham Special Professor, Edward Evans, has been awarded an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List for services to environmental science. As Lead Technical Advisor and science team leader for the Government Office for Science Foresight Future Flooding project, Edward helped supply the evidence base for the UK Government's current strategy for flood risk management, set out in the policy discussion document Making Space for Water. Now the UK Foresight model is being applied to predict future flood risks in the Taihu Basin, the region surrounding Shanghai in China, by Professor Evans and colleagues at The University of Nottingham including Professor Colin Thorne, one of the Foresight Future Flooding project's Principal Investigators. Professor Evans and Professor Cheng Xiaotao of the Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research (IWHR) in Beijing are Joint Project Directors of the 'China-UK Scenario Analysis Technology for River Basin Flood Risk Management in the Taihu Basin'. This project is developing climate and socio-economic forecasts and suitable risk management solutions to quantify risks of flooding in Shanghai and its surrounding area. The two Chinese characters in Shanghai's name mean 'up, on or above' 'the sea' or 'the upper reaches of the sea'. If the sea were to reach Shanghai during a storm surge, flood damage to this global financial and manufacturing centre would have catastrophic economic and social impacts.