Room G32 Earlsfort Terrace, UCD, Dublin
(Building next to National Concert Hall)
Thursday 24th February 2005 8 PM
PUBLIC TALK
FLOOD RISK MANAGEMENT
IN IRELAND
By
John Martin (Ph.D., M.I.E.I.) Design Section (Flood Relief),
Office of Public Works, Dublin.
Abstract:
The publication of the Report of the Flood Policy Review Group in November 2004 re-defines the approach to flood management in this country. The Report acknowledges that flooding is a natural phenomenon, and that we must learn to live with flood events. We must therefore move towards an integrated, holistic and catchment-based approach to flood risk management, rather than concentrating only on engineering works that defend against floods. In the future, the policy will be to minimise the level of risk of loss of life and damage to property and personal well-being in a sustainable, cost-effective manner, through (a) integrated, pro-active, catchment-based management of both existing and potential future flood risk and (b) the alleviation of impacts of flooding by means of non-structural, as well as structural, flood relief measures. This talk will highlight the key-points of the Report, outline the recommendations and discuss their implementation.
Biography:
John Martin is a graduate of Civil Engineering from University College Dublin. In 2002, he completed a Ph.D. thesis, funded by the OPW, in hydrodynamic computer modelling and GIS systems for flood alleviation, at the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering in University College Cork. He then spent over two years working as a post-doctorate researcher in the areas of remote sensing, high-resolution digital elevation model (DEM) generation for flood modelling, and hydrological DEM generation, at the Institute of Planetary Exploration in the German Aerospace Centre. He also worked as Operations Manager for High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) airborne campaigns around central and Eastern Europe. Since March 2004, he has worked as an engineer in the Design Section (Flood Relief) of the OPW, where he works in flood risk management, flood relief and flood forecasting projects.
Admission free