Identifying the Impact of Human Made Transformations of Historical Watercourses and Flood Risk

Thomas Moran, Sivaraj Valappil, David Harding

2018

Abstract

In the past, many urban rivers were piped and buried either to simplify development, hide pollution or in an attempt to reduce flood risk and these factors define a culverted watercourse. A large amount of these watercourses are not mapped, and if they are, then their original nature is not clearly identifiable due to being recorded as part of the sewer network. Where these culverted watercourses are not mapped due to being lost to time and development, we expressed these to be so-called ‘lost rivers’. There is a lack of awareness of the flood risk in catchments housing these rivers, and because many of them are incorrectly mapped as sewers, there is often confusion over their legal status and responsibility for their maintenance. To identify the culverted watercourses many datasets were used including LiDAR data (Ground Elevation Data), historical maps (earliest 1840's), asset data (Sewer network), and the river network. Automatic and manual identification of potential culverted watercourses were carried out and then the mapped assets are analysed with flooding data to understand the impacts. A GIS map has been created showing all potential lost rivers and sites of culverted watercourses in the North London area.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Moran T., Valappil S. and Harding D. (2018). Identifying the Impact of Human Made Transformations of Historical Watercourses and Flood Risk.In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Geographical Information Systems Theory, Applications and Management - Volume 1: GISTAM, ISBN 978-989-758-294-3, pages 173-179. DOI: 10.5220/0006672701730179

in Bibtex Style

@conference{gistam18,
author={Thomas Moran and Sivaraj Valappil and David Harding},
title={Identifying the Impact of Human Made Transformations of Historical Watercourses and Flood Risk},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Geographical Information Systems Theory, Applications and Management - Volume 1: GISTAM,},
year={2018},
pages={173-179},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0006672701730179},
isbn={978-989-758-294-3},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Geographical Information Systems Theory, Applications and Management - Volume 1: GISTAM,
TI - Identifying the Impact of Human Made Transformations of Historical Watercourses and Flood Risk
SN - 978-989-758-294-3
AU - Moran T.
AU - Valappil S.
AU - Harding D.
PY - 2018
SP - 173
EP - 179
DO - 10.5220/0006672701730179