Storm Surge 2013 : One Year On - Part Four : Spurn

by @cloudskinner

This is the fourth and final installment of our mini-series looking back over the year since the 5 December 2013 storm surge, which flooded many areas in the Humber Estuary and along the east coast of the UK. The first part, Modelling the Surge, looked at the research that has been conducted since the storm surge and has advanced our knowledge and understanding of these events in the Humber. Part Two, What we Learnt, focused on the 2014 Humber Conference and the lessons that have been learnt over the year. Last week guest blogger, Jazmin Scarlett, told us about some of the often unseen impacts of flooding, the mental health issues that can arise, and how communities band together after disasters.

For the final part I want to take a longer look into the future and try and predict what it has in store for Spurn. Spurn, or Spurn Point as it is commonly known, is a piece of land that resembles a spit, sweeping out from the edge of the Holderness Coast and round into the estuary. It is important for several reasons: it hosts the signalling station for the Association of British Ports (ABP), kind of an air traffic control but for shipping; it is home to lifeboat crews (formerly permanently, with their families, but now just the crews whilst on shift), providing them quick and easy access to the North Sea and the estuary; it is an important site for migrating bird life, being a National Nature Reserve owned by Yorkshire Wildlife Trust; it keeps the mouth of the estuary narrow – it is not known what effect a wider mouth would have but it is expected that it could lead to a narrower channel with implications for shipping; and finally, it acts to guard the estuary from the full ravages of storms and waves.

When evaluating the true impact of the 5 December 2013 storm surge one cannot ignore Spurn. One of the most dramatic scenes from that night was the damage done to the landform, as highlighted in the LiDAR images below.

The breach at Spurn as shown by LiDAR data. Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) techniques uses rapid pulses of laser light to measure the elevation of the ground, both rapidly and in high detail. The top image shows the breached section of Spurn before 2013, and bottom image shows the same section measured shortly after the 5 December 2013 event 

(LiDAR data collected and provided by the Environment Agency).

It is clear that extensive damage was done by the waves and high water levels during the storm surge. The water will have over topped the narrow spit of land that separates the sea from the estuary, and washed the embankment down towards the estuary – you can see in the image that the bank has gone, and a mound of material has built to the left, on the estuary side.

There once was a road here at the breach site 

(author's own photo taken November 2014)

To understand the implications of this, and what the future might be, we need to delve into the past of Spurn. There are two theories behind the formation of Spurn which have emerged from two former University of Hull academics -

1. George de Boer long maintained that Spurn was a spit – material eroded from the Holderness Coast washes down via longshore drift, and is deposited as a long spit in the form of Spurn. Over time as the coast line retreats, this spit will be rapidly destroyed and another will form further back in line with the coast.
2. John Pethick disagreed however – He argued that Spurn was not a spit as such and had not retreated over time through repeated cycles of destruction. Rather, the end of Spurn is an island and had been in a fixed position throughout history, whilst the area between the island and coast is in a constant state of flux, sometimes forming a spit, sometimes a chain of islands and sometime open channel and sand banks. Although the location of this region has shifted over time with the coast, the end of Spurn has remained.

Until the 2013 storm surge both these theories were just academic. In his chapter of Neale and Flenley’s 1981 book, ‘The Quaternary in Britain’, de Boer recounts the recent history of Spurn and tells a tale of how it became a very man-made feature. He claimed that a cycle of destruction was taking hold in 1849, initiated by a violent storm (probably not unlike 5 December), and within a few years several wide and deep breaches formed along the narrow spit as it were then.

Water at high tide washing over the breached section of Spurn 

(author's own photo taken in November 2014)

In response, and to maintain the lighthouse and lifeboat crews housed there, the government at the time funded works to fill the breaches and huge loads of chalk from Barton-upon-Humber were dumped into the channels to fill them. Spurn came into the hands of the military and prior to WW1 the defences were bolstered and groynes put in place to let the spit grow. During both World Wars Spurn played an important role, not least in monitoring for possible enemy U-Boats infiltrating the estuary. It even had a railway line until 1951, and withstood the infamous 1953 storm surge with little damage.

In the 1960’s Spurn passed from military hands into the Yorkshire Naturalist’s Trust and eventually Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s ownership, and the focus shifted from maintaining the hard, man-made structures of Spurn to the conservation of its environment and wildlife – as such the investment and work done to retain the defences has significantly decreased. I am sure George de Boer, if he were alive today, would suggest that the breach is the beginning of the cyclic destruction of Spurn that was stalled in the 1840’s.

View across the full breached section 

(author's own photo taken in November 2014)

I’m more inclined to side with John Pethick, however. Even if we were to just let nature take its course, I cannot envisage Spurn being utterly destroyed and replaced further into the estuary, nor do I think the evidence is strong for that having happened in the past, but it is clear that without huge investment to rebuild the spit as it were before 5 December, the nature of Spurn is going to change and will be in flux.

To predict what will happen to Spurn in the future, as the Holderness Coast retreats further back and sea levels rise, we need to adapt our models to be able to simulate some of these scenarios. Equally, it is important that we turn again the research of George de Boer and John Pethick, dig even further and try to understand the nature of Spurn; what it is, how it formed and how it has changed naturally in the past. Understanding that is the key to understanding its future.

Thanks to the Environment Agency and the Geomatics Team for the provision of LiDAR data used in this blog. This data was provided to University of Hull as part of the Dynamic Humber Project.

de Boer, G., 1981. Spurn Point : Erosion and Protection after 1849. IN: Neale, J., and Flenley, J., (eds). The Quaternary of Britain : Essays, reviews and original works on the Quaternary published in honour of Lewis Penny on his retirement. Pages 206 - 215. Pergamon Press, Oxford.

Storm Surge 2013 : One Year On - Part Three : Community Resilience

In Part 2 last week, the blog looked at some of the lessons learnt a year on after the 5 December 2013 storm surge in the Humber. This week the post come from guest blogger Jazmin Scarlett. Jazmin is a PhD student with a specialism in natural hazard response and mitigation, and offers her insights from her experience in how communities respond after natural disasters. In this post we expand our look, out of the Humber Estaury and southwards along the east coast of the UK, to Boston.

By Jazmin Scarlett

On the night of 5 December 2013 the Humber Estuary experienced its worst floods ‘since 1953.’ The main natural hazard that the country must co-exist with is flooding, and this post is going to discuss how despite its rather common occurrence across the country, we, as the British people, are not considering every factor when trying to mitigate and adapt to it.

In December 2014, £2.3billion was granted to the defence against flooding to protect 300,000 homes. We have known how bad flooding can get in this country and yet, in my opinion, the response has been rather slow. Even then, throwing money at the situation needs to be managed carefully and should address all the problems, not just the ones that everyone can physically see.

The Boston Stump (by Martin Clark)

The BBC Look North special report a year after the 2013 storm surge it showed how the people of Boston have been coping with some of the often unreported effects of flooding. Some people’s businesses were still suffering, some people’s homes were still being repaired, and some, unfortunately, were experiencing mental health problems. It is not unusual for mental health problems to arise after events like 5 December 2013, in fact it should be expected and mitigated for. It depends on a certain number of factors. One depends on factors, such as the actual experience the individual had: for example, farmers who lost their livelihoods and saw the deaths of their livestock in the 2003 East Gippsland bushfires in Victoria, Australia, experienced shock and post-traumatic stress (Whittaker et al., 2012). Those in Boston who lost properties and are still waiting for their lives to return back to normal told Look North that they are experiencing depression.

Another depends on the individual’s (and the community’s) coping strategies in terms of psychosocial resilience and physical mitigation strategies (Cashman and Cronin, 2008). Physical mitigation strategies usually involve engineering solutions such as the Thames Barrier, monitoring systems such as the Flood Alerts provided by the Environment Agency and land-use restrictions (potentially exacerbated by properties being built on floodplains). These physical solutions are far more obvious than psychosocial resilience, not just for flooding but for other hazards as well. Taylor (1999, in Cashman and Cronin, 2008) states that adaptations for community recovery from a disaster largely depends on simple explanations for the occurrence of an “inconceivable” event.

The Thames Flood Barrier (by Ian Capper)

It appears only when push comes to shove, when we lose properties, livelihoods, lives and money do we react to the hazard. Why must it be only when the hazard has occurred and caused all the damage that we say “we should do something about this.”

Another angle to this could be why can we not co-exist with the hazard? Kelman and Mather’s (2008) paper looks at how people living with volcanoes can become more resilient but I believe it rings true for flooding and other hazards as well. It details a ‘sustainable livelihoods approach’ in which they state that to live with the risk means accepting that the hazard is a usual part of life and that rather just surviving or reacting to the extreme event when it occurs, living with the risk allows the community to create and maintain habitats as well as livelihoods which might lead to the hazard becoming less of a danger and more integrated into day-to-day life.

We are a very resourceful species and certainly in this country have the knowledge of flooding impacts but why are we not more proactive about it? Members of the Department of GEES, University of Hull research various aspects of flooding, and other hazards. An aspect of this is education: I have always been passionate that all individuals at risk of hazards ought not be ignorant to that risk, and part of that is engaging communities in mitigating against our 'public enemy number one'.

There are psychological means to try and explain why people are ‘caught by surprise’ by a hazard, but in reality that should not be the case. I will give an example that I touched upon in my Masters' thesis.

It is a concept called 'saliency' – we make sense and prioritise our daily issues/threats. I do not think about flooding every day. Why should I? It not is looming over the horizon right now and I have other things to worry about. I have to think about managing my money and my disability. I worry about my grandmother. I hope my parents are coping with being parents to four newly adopted kids. I hope my best friend is doing alright in her new job. I concern myself with personal aspects of my life. Every person will be concerned about different things, based on what they value most. I value the wellbeing of my family and friends most. I myself, have been fortunate enough to not experience a flood so therefore, I will take no further action until the hazard is impending and will threaten the safety of my friends and colleagues.

Aerial view of Boston (by Richard Croft)

It is not all bad. The floods in Boston fostered social cohesion and a form of community resilience. In the face of adversity, neighbours who barely knew one another came together to use their own skills, knowledge and goodwill as a joint force to help ease and spread the stress of the situation and get everyone out of danger. After the event, the common ground these people shared is the experience of surviving the potentially life threatening situation. The social cohesion will now continue and hopefully live on to continue aiding one another when eventually the authorities leave and no longer offer the short-term recovery support. The aid could be physical: helping rebuild properties. People often fail to realise that counsel is just as important as physical aid. Local practices will experience an increased number of mental health related cases but sometimes, the social cohesion, the fact that the person was physically there, experiencing what they were experiencing, can be a useful and powerful recovery mechanism.

Social cohesion is also not a new concept to the government and researchers in this country. There are several governmental reports on it. An example is: “Guidance on the duty to promote community cohesion.” You just need to read the title to know how prominent it has been on the agenda. Even the House of Commons has a collection of reports on it and there are researchers looking at resilience against flooding here in the UK.

So if the government has been trying to be proactive in fostering social cohesion as a form of community resilience, why does it appear to be reactive? In all honesty, resilience is hard to measure unlike vulnerability and risk (even then they can be hard to measure). You will not know how effective the community resilience is or where to improve it until the hazard event occurs. I am researching resilience in volcanic environments and although there are indicators to help identify its presence, I do not know how resilient the communities are unless I observe it in a volcanic crisis. And that is a little dangerous.

I believe that the floods experienced in 2013, along with every other major flooding event this country has faced, have largely provoked a reaction to them. In the short-term, money is put in to physical mitigation against it and the short-term recovery programs. If this country is to overcome these ‘surprises,’ more effort needs to be made on being proactive, actively engaging in mitigation and adaptation between flood events. A lot could get done on the community scale in that time, yet it would require the support of everyone. However, people will turn mainly to what they believe will bring them security: the physical presence of flood defences.

Let the authorities deal with that, but get the community involved as well, it will foster another form of community resilience: social networks. Giving the community a sense of empowerment and confidence to prepare will help them mentally cope with the arrival of another flood event and hopefully, lead the country into being proactive and not reactive against our main natural hazard threat.

Whittaker J., Handmer J. and Mercer D. (2012) Vulnerability to Bushfires in Rural Australia: a Case Study from East Gippsland, Victoria. Journal of Rural Studies. Vol. 28. Pg. 161-173.

Cashman K.V. and Cronin S.J. (2008) Welcoming a Monster to the World: Myths, Oral Tradition and Modern Societal Response to Volcanic Disasters. Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research. Vol. 176. Pg. 407-418.

Kelman I. and Mather T.A. (2008) Living with Volcanoes: the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach for Volcano-Related Opportunities. Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research. Vol. 172. Pg. 189-198.

Storm Surge 2013 : One Year On - Part Two : What we Learnt

by @cloudskinner

This is the second post of our mini-series about the 5 December 2013 storm surge, and its legacy for the Humber region in particular. Last week's post highlighted some of the research that had been undertaken after the surge, and why this is important for understanding the future flood risk in the Humber, especially in the context of climate change which is predicted to bring bigger and more frequent storms, as well as a steadily rising sea level. This post looks at what we have learnt about the storm surge a year after the event, and summarises the presentations given at the 2014 Humber Conference held at Hull's Guild Hall in mid November, organised by the Humber Nature Partnership. You can view individual presentations using the links on the presenters' names.

Dr Susan Manson from the Environment Agency (EA), a co-author on the research highlighted last week, began the conference by providing some of the key scientific details about the storm surge. It has commonly been held that the devastating 1953 storm surge was the baseline for these events in the Humber - the 2013 storm surge is currently the largest on record, but there have been five other events larger than 1953 in between. The fact that the devastation and loss of life has never been as extensive is true testament to the defences and plans that have been invested in since that time. For the recorded tide from the EA gauge at Immingham, which has been recording since 1963, 2013 was the highest ever water level, and by some margin.

Immingham Dock Oil Terminal - The water level recorded here on 5 December 2013 was the highest on record (by "Chris")

Susan gave some figures about the surge. 116 flood warnings were issued. 1,170 properties were flooded around the Humber estuary, but the defences protected a staggering 156,000 further from the surge. It normally takes a tidal crest more than an hour to propagate from Spurn Point, at the mouth of the estuary, to Blacktoft Jetty along the River Ouse, but the surge covered this distance in just 15 minutes – described as “like a wall” by some.

40 km of defences were overtopped but most of them held, with only two points where the flood defences themselves were breached (south of Cleethorpes on the south bank, NE Lincolnshire, and near Skeffling, on the north bank, E Yorkshire). The EA has been busy strengthening and repairing defences as fast as they can. Philip Winn of the EA described how they are using X-Rays to check the integrity of defences to ensure they are up to standard, and how the defences at Alexandria Dock have been improved (all of the flooding in Hull City Centre emerged from overtopping the 1 km stretch here). Phillip also described how the EA are looking to the future, reconsidering the Humber Strategy drawn up before the flood and going to the Government with a request for £1bn to upgrade the estuary’s defences to a 1 in 200 year standard.

Flood defences being repaired shortly after the storm surge - Chowder Ness, near Barton-upon-Humber, on the south bank, N Lincolnshire (by Jonathan Thacker)

But for many people the misery of the storm surge continues. One of the worst affected places is the small town of South Ferriby on the south bank. The defences overtopped and flooded the majority of the houses there and depositing large quantities of silt and mud inside. One of my old school friends described on Facebook how she sat on the stairs watching the water rise as her children slept upstairs. For many it was over 6 months until they could move back into their houses.

The Cemex factory was very badly damaged and a full year after the flooding it still has not returned to production. Kevin Groombridge of the firm described how the flooding did not just bring water, but also sediment and salt. These clogged machinery and corroded the electrics of the site, which were all at ground level. Having never flooded in 75 years they nearly did not heed the flood warnings from the EA, but the Director of the site insisted the workforce move. It is possible that he saved numerous lives by that decision and thankfully that is just speculation.

The Cemex Cement Factory at South Ferriby (by David Wright)

Kevin described how immediately after the flood a ‘Blitz-spirit’ emerged among the staff, and how the factory manager had to buy new office furniture, laptops, stationery and even diesel generators on a credit card in order for them to continue working. Literally everything on the factory site had been destroyed.

Agriculture was also badly hit. Andrew Wraith of Savills UK, an Agribusiness, described some of the impacts that has struck them. On their Yokefleet Estate they have 34 residences and 22 of those flooded, and 1000 acres of their 2500 were flooded to a depth of 4 ft., and a green pea factory was flooded. Some of this land was flooded for 2 -3 weeks but was alleviated by pumps. A major issue they faced was soil erosion caused not by the flooding but the speed of the water draining away.

They lost many crops, both planted and stored, and Andrew put the cost of these losses in seven figures. But Andrew also said that they considered themselves lucky – when the surge hit they anticipated that their crop loss would be almost 100% but it was actually a loss of 5-10% of the yield. He put this down to the dry conditions prior to the surge allowing for effective drainage of the damaging salt water. The timing of the surge was also fortunate, as had it had been in the spring or the summer they would have felt a two year impact on yields.

Behind Hull's Tidal Barrier on 5 December 2013 - It the water level came within 40 cm of overtopping (by @Tom_Coulthard)

And it is this sense of being lucky that I want to end this post on. If you were one of the residents in South Ferriby, out of your home for the better part of a year, you will not feel lucky, and you weren’t. If you live in one of the 156,000 properties protected by the EA’s defences, a product of decades of work and investment, you were also not lucky but fortunate that we have invested in our excellent EA. But in many ways the Humber estuary could be described as being lucky as stories emerge of near misses and close calls. It was probably only the decision by one Director at Cemex that saved the lives of their workers. The tidal barrier at Hull came within 40 cm of overtopping and putting at risk hundreds of properties along the River Hull – if the surge was timed with the high tide, rather than 2 hours apart, it could have made the difference and spilled over. If the weather in the prior days had been wet then the salty flood water would not have drained as quickly as it did, this fact saving much farmland and properties from further damage.

In all the defences of the Humber were put under considerable strain by a massive, unusual, and largely unprecedented event, but came out on top. Just. Those responsible for them should be praised that they withstood the barrage, and that there was no loss of life. But we should not become complacent – we may never witness another event of that scale again in our lifetime, but as our climate warms, becomes stormier, and the sea level rises, the chances of another, or larger, storm surge in the Humber increases. We need to continually work to keep our defences ready.

Storm Surge 2013 : One Year On - Part One : Modelling the Surge

by @cloudskinner

This is the first post of a four week mini-series looking back at the storm surge of 5 December 2013. The surge caused extensive flooding along the East Coast of the UK but our focus has been on the area immediately around the Humber, and you can read our reaction shortly after the storm surge in this older post. Over the next few weeks we will be discussing the research that has been ongoing since the event, how it affected and continues to affect local residents and businesses, the community resilience that has been built and finally we consider the damage done to Spurn Point and its potential future.

This week the focus will be on a paper recently published by myself, colleagues at the University of Hull, the Association of British Ports (ABP) and the local Environment Agency (EA), which stemmed directly from the storm surge. The paper is free to view until 28 March 2015, after which you will require a subscription to Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science to view.

Hull's flood defences overtopping on 5 December 2013 (by @tom_coulthard)

Estuaries are very complex environments. There is a lot going on, beginning with the inputs of often several rivers, and the sea in the form of tidal flows. The relative influence of these on when and where the water and sediment moves in the estuary depends on the tidal cycle and the discharge levels of the rivers. It is a to and fro tug of war between these for influence within the estuary.

If that was not complex enough, there are secondary flows within the estuary. River water is fresh and sea water is salty, making the two flows a different density along with water that is mixture of the two in between. The two water types are often different temperatures too, again resulting in different densities and inducing flows from more dense to less dense regions. All of the flows are influenced by Coriolis forces, the deflection of water flow caused by the rotation of the Earth. The shape of an estuary also influences flow, and in combination with the influences above, estuaries like the Humber often show two channels along the bottom - one resulting from tides coming in and one from tides going out. Finally, overlain on these are the winds, waves and pressure influences of the weather.

This makes estuaries very complex and turbulent, and this turbulence can form a layer of thick sediment laden water to form along the bed - this basal mud layer clings to the bottom and effectively lubricates water flows along the estuary and shields the bed from erosion and deposition.  The salinity of the water also causes fine sediment to clump together in a process called flocculation which makes them behave like larger sediment particles.

It is commonly thought that to model the processes in an estuary then you need to account for all of these processes, but doing so is incredibly computationally expensive. It is possible to do, but even on expensive and powerful machines it often takes several days to model a single tidal cycle. Trying to use them to predict the future of an estuary several decades in the future would be almost impossible. Our approach was to use a simpler model, CAESAR-Lisflood, which has been widely used for a similar purpose on rivers for over a decade, to try and model the Humber Estuary successfully without all of this detail.

Animation showing the CAESAR-Lisflood model simulating the 2013 storm surge and associated flooding.

It was during this process when the storm surge struck and the focus of our research switched. We had already tested the model's ability to reproduce tidal flows - rapidly and at small timescales - so we soon tried applying the data recorded by ABP during the surge. This showed that the model could also reproduce the location and extents of the flooding on that night. This was using the latest information on the Humber's flood defences provided by the EA. The quickness of the model to process the data would make it suitable for producing numerous possible scenarios based on live and forecast data, and potentially help predict the extent of future flooding before it occurs.

This work is ongoing. Next week I will highlight how local residents and businesses were affected by the flooding, as discussed at the Humber Conference of December last year. If you wish to view this paper you can do so here.

Skinner, C. J., Coulthard, T. J., Parsons, D. R., Ramirez, J. A., Mullen, L., and Manson, S., 2015. Simulating tidal and storm surge hydraulics with a simple 2D inertia based model, in the Humber Estuary, UK. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science. 155, 126-136 doi:10.1016/j.ecss.2015.01.019

This City Belongs to Everyone

by Chris Skinner

Recently, I was tasked with designing five workshops for our Foundation Science programme to introduce Geography specific material to those students planning on studying it in the future. For one of these workshops I plan on looking at our city, Hull, and its surrounding area, asking how, as Geographers and researchers, we can get involved in understanding and influencing these. I want to demonstrate to my students that whatever your research area you can be invested in your local area.

William Wilberforce House - The Abolitionist was born in Hull

(© Copyright David Hillas and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence)

I began by hijacking a Departmental staff email discussion to ask "what do you consider to be the most pressing geographical issue facing Hull?", and I found the responses interesting, highlighting how different research specialisms cause people to think of our local area in different ways. So interesting, I wanted to share some of the responses here with you.

Myself,  I would say flooding and the increased pressure caused by rising sea levels. This was shown clearly by the storm surge of December 5th 2013 - the tidal barrier at the mouth of the River Hull had just 40 cm left to spare and the minimum sea level rise predicted by the IPCC to 2100 is 40 cm. Obviously, the city will need to invest in better defences or other solutions. I wrote about this in a previous post.

In mainly short replies, several of the Physical Geographers here agreed in their responses -

"Flooding!" - Professor Lynne Frostick

"Climate/Environmental change, sensu lato." - Dr Jane Bunting

Holding back the tide - Hull's Tidal Barrier

(© Copyright Andy Beecroft and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence)

Professor Jack Hardisty, however, saw an opportunity to establish the city as the heart of the "Energy Estuary" as the most important issue. Many agencies are working very hard and with great success to create a hub of sustainable energy in the Humber, both in the construction of infrastructure (like the development of the Siemens off-shore turbine factory in Hull), and the generation of power, such as tidal generators.

Professor Jeff Blackford suggested "Economic inequality and lack of social mobility" to be the big issue, and he was supported by many of the Human Geography researchers.

“A combination of its structural economic legacy, urban austerity, and environmental situation” - Professor Andy Jonas

“Flooding and relatedly, the feeling that the place was abandoned and left to rot in the aftermath of the 2007 floods.” - Dr Briony McDonagh

I like this quote from Briony as it highlights how the issue identified by the Physical Geographers, the flooding, is intrinsically linked to those emerging from the Human Geographers. The flooding in 2007 needs to be understood in the physical sense to find out what caused it and how it can be avoided in the future, but also the impacts on people and their perception of the city and its place in the country needs to be understood. I find Hull has a sense of abandonment by the rest of the country that was either started or was reinforced by the bombing during the Blitz (and subsequent lack of reporting) - this same sense emerged post-2007 that the city was ignored in favour of other areas after the flood. Indeed, the major flooding on the 5th December 2013 slipped under the nation's radar somewhat too.

The National Film Theatre on Beverley Road was listed in 2007. It was bombed and burnt out in 1941 and was never repaired - it is one of the last remaining visible bombsites from the Blitz.

(© Copyright Paul Glazzard and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence)

“The challenge of overcoming Hull’s negative (and inaccurate) imaginative geographies – on the receiving end of too many Hull or Hell jokes…” - Dr Suzanne Beech

However, one issue raised by Professor David Atkinson provoked a discussion. Here's his full response -

“The effects of the city of culture award before, during and after 2017

Hull as an under-bounded city (and current wrangles to fix this)

The elusive nature of place and ‘Hullness’”

A different resonance - Whereas the rest of the country had iconic red phone boxes, Hull's were white (although the tourist office still sold red phone box souvenirs)

(Image by RM21, from en.wikepedia under Creative Commons Licence)

I want to pick up the issue of Hull as an under-bounded city. What does this means? It is down to the way the city boundaries are drawn that exclude some of the sub-urban areas around the city, like Cottingham and Willerby. These areas are more affluent than much of the city and are not included when drawing statistics for the city, or contributing towards Council Tax to run the city's services (which many of the residents in those areas will use). This is a relatively uncommon situation and negatively skews many of the statistical indices for the city and reinforcing its negative reputation in the country. There are plans to rectify this, but as you can imagine it is not popular in those areas that may go from being within the East Riding of Yorkshire region to being with the City of Hull.

Professor David Gibbs also felt this was the major issue and highlighted some of the controversy, suggesting that this would be an interesting topic to look at as part of a workshop.

“I agree with [Professor Atkinson], the under-bounded nature of Hull and the debates between Hull and the [East Riding of Yorkshire] would be good and lots of on-line debates to tap into on press websites – see the Hull  [Daily Mail] website for a good deal of lively debate in the comments section!"

This issue was also picked up by Dr Kevin Milburn. Here is his full response -

“For a long time it seems the city’s location has been a handicap (or at least perceived as being such), to which I must also lob in the relatively poor transport connectivity of the city, especially to other cities and towns in the North. It feels like it would almost be quicker to get to, say, Grimsby or York, by unicycle than public transport. Now, however with renewed interest in the opportunities offered by the estuary, most obviously demonstrated by the recent Siemens investment announcement, perhaps Hull’s peripheral location might actually start to be something of a plus point. The city’s isolation/'end of the lineness’ – and supposed subsequent uniqueness – was interestingly used as a positive by the Hull 2017 bid team.

I also agree with the points raised re. Hull’s boundary and the impact this has on where Hull finds itself on national league tables re. schools, poverty, unemployment rates etc. I find it bizarre that somewhere like Romford can be considered, administratively at least, part of London (it doesn’t get more Essex!) and yet Cottingham, for example, is not part of the Hull metropolitan area.”

HS3 - Could a high speed rail link between Manchester-Leeds-Hull improve the city's connectivity?

(Image by mattbuck, from en.wikipedia under Creative Commons Licence)

David Atkinson raised further points that might contribute to the sense that Hull is dislocated from the rest of the country, something picked up above by Kevin - 

"- a lack of central government funds to assist with reconstruction after the war

- the sudden collapse of the fishing industry in the 1970s and 1980s, and the failure of national government to protect Hull's interests (as perceived by the locals)
  
- the decline of some other, traditional, heavy industries with limited central government assistance in the 1980s-2000s

- the rising sense that other cities and regions could sneer at Hull (reaching its height in the 2003 'Crap Town' accolade)"

I found this exercise really interesting and really insightful, and I look forward to seeing how the people involved above shape their future research in order to investigate the issues they've highlighted. I can't speak for the others, but I am sure it is true, but I love this city, my city, and whilst we're not blind to its issues and problems, we embrace its wonderful character and personality which, honestly, is unlike anywhere else in the world - that's partly why we won, and were so proud to win, the City of Culture status for 2017. Nothing sums it up better than the bid video - This City Belongs to Everyone.

I think my students are going to find the responses useful and I plan on having an enjoyable and lively discussion about them during the workshop.

The Surge 2013

by Chris Skinner (@cloudskinner)

This blog post is going to talk about the storm surge that swept along the east coast of the UK on the 5th December 2013, last week. Rather ironically, I was going to post about problems in predicting disasters and how we mitigate against these, but this seems more topical and worthy of a post., and I hope to give you a bit of an insight into how a GEES researcher responds to live events relevant to their field.

The surge seemed to catch everyone by surprise. I checked the forecast on the Monday as my in-laws were travelling to Hull from London to visit us on the 5th, and the Met Office app suggested Thursday was going to be quite nice, but a bit windy in the far North-East. The forecast did evolve over the week, but not so much to suggest the conditions that resulted in them passing at least five overturned lorries on their journey (two and a van on the Ouse bridge alone).

On Thursday afternoon, there were warnings of a storm surge – a temporary increase of sea level caused by low pressure and high winds – that would potentially flood coastal towns on the east coast. Our local news focussed on Grimsby and Cleethorpes as being the most likely to be hard hit. Hull was just at medium risk. Myself and Prof Coulthard (my boss) watched the tide rise on the Immingham tidal gauge and compared it to the data we held from the same site during the 1953 storm surge.

The 1953 storm is THE storm when talking about storm surges in the UK. It was big and it caused extensive damage and over 300 people lost their lives. This storm was being billed as ‘the worst since 1953’, yet to our astonishment we saw the tidal gauge go up and look increasingly like it was going to exceed the level recorded back then.

As we were leaving the office, around five thirty, the first warnings started coming in that Victoria Dock in Hull was at risk. I followed the story unfold on Twitter as photos popped up showing the first signs of water overtopping the defences. The Marina also flooded and water spilled out into the Kingston Retail Park, and the home of the Hull Stingrays and Hull’s most versatile venue, the Ice Arena.

Flooding between the Marine and Kingston Retail Park in Hull Photo by @estuary_ecology

The City of Hull held its breath as high tide approached. Only the tidal barrier stood between the surging sea and thousands of properties in the flood plain of the River Hull behind. The tide crept ever upwards, lapping at the sides of the mighty barrier but could not overcome it. But it was close – only 40cm remained of that barrier, built to defend the city after the1953 surge. It had done its job, just. The tide height of 5.8m is a record high for Hull.

The Saviour of Hull! - The Tidal Barrier holds back the tide. Photo by @Tom_Coulthard (This is just one of many great photos).

The sea water eventually receded at Hull.  High tide was later in the inner estuary and badly flooded South Ferriby and Goole. The flooding continued further south, in Skegness and Boston. Another great tidal barrier, the Thames, was also needed to save large areas of East London.

Now that the waters have passed the data is beginning to be collected and analysed. What seemed to take everyone by surprise was the scale of it. Data from the Immingham gauge stopped when the level reached 8.5m*, but from the curve it looks like it would have continued to around 9.5m – 2m above the predicted astronomical tide (from the pull of the Sun and Moon), and over a metre greater than the highest reading from the 1953 storm surge (at 8.4m).

*I don't know why the gauge stopped, most of them did before high tide that night. My guess is that they either reached the top of their scale, or exceeded a threshold where it is assume too high to be accurate - The Immingham gauge stopped at around the maximum of the 1953 tide level.

This is very significant. I don’t think anyone anticipated it. As I said previously, 1953 was THE storm. For the last few months I have been working on a computer model to simulate the flows in the Humber, with one of the aims to be able to predict the estuary’s response to 1953-like events, especially in the face of rising sea levels. Much of the Humber’s defences were built after the 1953 surge so unsurprisingly the model showed they coped well. Our hypothesis was that the rising sea levels on top of that might cause them some issues, so we wanted to try and model that.

Naturally, first chance on Friday we ran our model with the tidal heights recorded on the evening before. Our model suggests that if we had been able to predict the scale of the surge we could have anticipated the flooding, even just based on this preliminary data (although a large pinch of salt is needed when interpreting the simulation below).

As bad as the flooding was, it has to be said that our infrastructure did a fantastic job. The scale of this surge was unprecedented, quite a bit bigger than 1953, yet there has not been the devastation, and thankfully, the loss of life that followed that storm. If it were not for structures like the Hull Tidal Barrier, it would have been much, much worse.

And that leaves us with a warning. The International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), uses different models to try and predict future sea level rises for the next 100years, and the 'Best Case Scenario' - where greenhouse gas emmissions are cut immediately - would likely cause a sea level rise of 40cm. This is the capacity left over on the Hull Tidal Barrier. When we consider that an increase of 60-80cm is probably a better estimate, the ability of our infrastructure to manage this size of event in the future needs to be considered. It maybe that this storm surge is an event that won't be repeated in our lifetimes, but it now stands as THE storm we’ll be using the measure future resilience and it pushed us right to the edge.