UK Gears Up for Disasters

I have been told a couple of times that Future Towns and its philosophy is a little negative, in that it speaks of disaster as being the norm. I have always felt that this opinion is one born of the fact that never in the full history of mankind have we had to deal with a true global catastrophe. But with all the recent one in one hundred and fifty year floods that have hit Britain in the last five years or so, this attitude is changing. There are climate panels run by the government and staffed by some of the finest scientists in the world which are feeding other government institutions like the Environment Agency with alarming predictions. This in turn means that those agencies are better funded and if they are not funded well they have the evidence needed to get that funding in the future. For example the UKCP09 report (http://ukcp09.defra.gov.uk/) was issued this week under the shadow of a major climate funding summit in Europe, which is looking to fund sustainable development in the developing economies of the world, including China and India, to the tune of 150 billion Euro's a year. Also, the Environment Agency is seeking a doubling of funding to £1billion annually for flood proofing work in vulnerable communities and sea fronts, where rising sea levels will put pressure on eroding shore lines. Also, a group of companies, some with government funding are now building or planning to build flood resistant properties. For example http://www.lifeproject.info/. This is a building firm with three current projects with flood mitigation features, such as a flood plain in the front of the building, which is served by a river and the properties are raised up on a large bank. While all this is good, some of the designs look vulnerable to a wide range of other disasters. Future Towns, believe good solid designs can take away risk for many of the potential disasters, like storms and fires. However, in the UKCP09 document released this week, increased ferocity of storms is one of the features of a projected future, taking us to 2080, along with higher temperatures of up to 41 degrees, and wet winters with drought summers. There is a movement afoot to provide safer housing, but just limiting those designs to flooding alone is very short sighted.