Commercial flood risk management
Flood risk management is challenging. There are invariably numerous strategies available (including scale and timing), multiple sources of uncertainty, and many tangible and intangible benefits and costs. Traditional decision-making approaches have a place, but often fail to account for these complexities. This causes poor decisions and damages credibility with stakeholders. Aither's flood management tool is a decision support tool that draws on the latest research in economics and machine learning to provide clear and actionable evidence.
Integrated
Integrates hydrology, engineering and economics to capture the full range of social, environmental and financial benefits and costs, both tangible and intangible
Robust
Evaluates the benefits and costs of each strategy over hundreds of future scenarios to rigorously account for multiple risks, including drought and climate change
Optimised
Intelligently compares the performance of hundreds of strategies and identifies the best, resulting in significantly better decisions, justifications to investors, and community outcomes
Aither's flood management tool can be readily tailored to solve any flood risk management problem, and consider the performance of management strategies intended to mitigate the impacts of coastal or inland flooding.
The following is a stylised application to the flood mitigation of a large distribution centre. It is based on hypothetical data and should not be used for specific investment decisions. Please get in touch with us discuss how we can develop a bespoke application of the tool for your flood management problem.
Demonstration
In this application, Aither's flood management tool considers the flood risk management of a large distribution centre situated in a floodplain. Aither's flood management tool considers a number of possible management strategies, and compares these against the 'do nothing' base case strategy, where no mitigation is undertaken.
Inputs
Flooding
These parameters specify the impacts of different flood events.
Building parameters
These parameters specify several features relating to the value of the distribution centre's structure, contents and revenues dependent on its operation.
General parameters
In this demonstration, only the discount rate can be modified.
Management strategy
The management strategy specifies the actions taken to mitigate the impacts of flooding. The selected strategy is compared against a base case with no mitigation.
Setup inflatable dyke Ensures that no flooding of the distribution centre occursRent alternative center Eliminates outage costs
Performance summary
The table presents a comparison of the performance between the selected management strategy and the 'do nothing' base strategy. The net present value (NPV) is calculated as the difference between the present values of avoided damages and mitigation costs. The benefit cost ratio (BCR) is calculated as the ratio of the present values of avoided damages and mitigation costs.
Detailed summary
The table presents a detailed comparison of the different types of flood damages and management action costs. All values are relative to the 'do nothing' base strategy, and are expressed in 'once off' present value terms, calculated using the selected discount rate.
Detailed results
The costs and benefits presented above are driven by various physical and economic factors, which are further explored in the charts below.
Flood events
The chart shows the average number of floods in each year.
Flood depths
The chart compares the flood depth in the distribution centre under the base and selected management strategies.
Damage depth curve
The chart shows the relationship between flood depth and total flood damages under the base and selected management strategies.
Mitigation benefits
The chart shows the benefits (avoided damages) of the selected management strategy.
Mitigation costs
The chart shows the upfront and ongoing costs of the selected management strategy.
Net present value
The histogram shows the distribution of net benefits over different future scenarios, relative to the base strategy. The wider the distribution, the greater the potential risk.