Risks and Extremes

Abstract

This chapter describes the research activity on risks and extremes at Wallingford. With the agreement of the Steering Committee, the Flood Studies Report (FSR) (NERC, 1975) was published in 1975 in five volumes, containing the hydrological recommendations, the meteorological and flood routing studies and the hydrological data and maps. By the mid 1990s, the principal methods of rainfall and flood frequency used in the UK had been based on the FSR for 20 years, and it was recognised that there were significantly more rainfall and flood data available that should be incorporated into estimation methods. In the years following the publication of the Flood Estimation Handbook (FEH), a number of new sources of river flow and catchment data became available and substantial improvements were made to some key elements of the flood estimation procedures. Applied research into flood estimation continues to be an important topic.