Professor Nigel Wright from the University of Birmingham visited IWHR and lectured on urban flood resilience on April 19. He was the first lecturer on the institute’s long-established Global Vision Forum in 2023 .

A Professor of water and environmental Engineering, Prof. Wright’s research interests in recent years direct to flood risk management, which is a key focus in China’s master plan for the high quality development of the water sector, as introduced by IWHR Vice President Dr. Li Jinxiu at the welcome meeting. She hoped the exchange with Prof. Wright could inspire both sides to enhance flood management and build flood-resilient societies.

Welcome meeting for Professor Nigel Wright

Prof. Wright’s lecture, titled “Comparison of UFR between Countries and a Case Study in Chengdu, Sichuan,” compared the approaches taken by four countries – U.S., U.K., the Netherlands, and China – to reduce flood risks and build flood-resilient cities. Practices of computer-based natural flood management (NFM), including feasibility demonstration of NFM projects, development of gridded models, simulation of urban drainage systems, solutions for data scarcity, etc., were illustrated based on case studies in London, U.K., and Chengdu, China.

After the lecture, experts and graduate students from IWHR discussed with Professor Wright the cost-effectiveness analysis for flood resilient studies, the adoption of AI in flood risk management, and parameter setting for two-dimensional shallow water models.

Playback of the lecture is available here.