Case Studies

Collaboration to Aid Flooded Anglesey Residents

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The Background

Client: Waterco

This project was contracted by Storm’s long-standing client Waterco on behalf of the Isle of Anglesey Council to investigate flooding that had occurred at the properties in the village of Benllech, Anglesey. The data Storm have collected will be used to create a hydraulic model which will inform the client on the best ways of mitigating the flood risk to the area.

Process

The Challenge

This survey involved a pre-site visit to inform landowners that Storm’s surveying teams would be in the area. This also informed surveyors as to any unknowns that may not have been caught by the client during their desktop based specification.

During this site visit project lead Senior Surveyor Tom came across a resident who showed that her back garden was in flood and the watercourse had burst its banks and it had been like this for several months. Storm informed the client immediately. A site meeting was then arranged between Storm and the client (Waterco) to discuss the data to be collected within this flooded back garden. Being on site with the hydraulic engineer was very informative and made it clear the data they needed Storm to obtain within the garden – it was a shame that they visited on the rainiest day of the entire project!

By collaborating with the subcontracted CCTV / Manhole survey team they were able to record most of the underground connections and trace, with dye, whether or not there was a connection from the top of the watercourse with the bottom. Again the heavy downfall during the survey made it a challenge to see anything on the CCTV within the culverts and was a balancing act of getting the data and not getting the crawler stuck underground!

Process

The Results

The site work was completed within schedule, with the extra information collected within the flooded back garden and other areas which were found on site. The data was processed within Trimble Business Centre and then GeoRiver® which enabled the surveyors to export Flood Modeller data files and, at the request of the client, individual cross section coordinate files at a click of a button. The CCTV data and the watercourse survey data was combined and sent to the client.

Due to the great collaboration with the subcontractor and the client Storm were able to find unknown issues, survey exactly what was required and also send the bespoke deliverables on time.

“Benllech was a very wet and challenging survey to undertake in the first week of January. The village was having some serious flooding issues In particular an elderly lady’s home where the water had breached the culvert and was flowing into her home, so this required us to team up with a utilities company. We surveyed and traced the full length of the watercourse highlighting constrictions, pinch points and structures that were being overwhelmed and even met the engineers on site. I personally found this job very rewarding and interesting and left there knowing we had done all we could to help the elderly lady.”