WET News

6 WET NEWS JUNE 2016 News+ Report flags up flood barrier's lack of resilience • EA to address report recommendations in Foss Barrier upgrade, will see the pump capacity increase and provide a higher standard of protection for local people. S taff were forced to shut down the pumps and open the barrier aer water got into the Foss Barrier Pumping Station in York on Boxing Day, when exceptionally high rainfall and river levels led to extensive flooding in the city, an independent report has revealed. The EA said the report's recommendations to minimise the risk of water entering the facility in future will be addressed in the £17M upgrade currently underway at the pumping station. This includes addressing water leaks in the service tunnel and new pumps with an increased capacity which will be installed by winter 2016. By the end of 2017 the pumping station will have been raised to ensure the barrier is more resilient in the long term. The report, by consultant CH2M, was commissioned to investigate how water got into the Foss Barrier Pumping Station in York on December 26, 2015. Its findings confirm that: • The peak flow in the Foss on December 26 was extreme, equating to an event with a 0.5% (1/200) probability of occurring each year • All eight pumps at the Foss Barrier were working that day at full capacity but water levels in the Foss continued to rise, by approximately 140mm an hour • The EA's decision to raise the barrier on the evening of December 26 prevented even more widespread flooding, and delayed the peak water levels on the River Foss by some 18 hours. EA staff opened the barrier aer water entered the building, forcing them to turn off the electricity supply and the pumps. The report found that a build-up of water in the barrier's underground service tunnel, combined with water flowing through the drainage system, filled the service tunnel until water emerged from the floor access points inside the pumping station building. The report concluded that most of the water that entered the building did so via the service tunnel drainage system through a combination of a leaking construction joint and an access cover which had been opened to pump water out of the service tunnel. Sir James Bevan, EA chief executive, said: "I welcome this report, which will help us make the Foss Barrier even more resilient in future to extreme floods and greater flows on the River Foss. The upgrade work, which began in April, will see the pump capacity increase, providing a higher standard of protection for local people. "Work on the Foss Barrier is just one component of a wider programme of work, following the government's announce- ment of £45M for York. We are "We are taking a catchment-wide approach to improve flood resilience in the city, looking at how we can slow the flow in the upper reaches of the Ouse and Foss catchments as well as new flood defences" Sir James Bevan, EA • Division extends group's mechanical engineering into electrical installation. F orward Industrial has launched a new electrical division to provide a comprehensive package of electrical insulation services for the water industry. The new division will offer an onsite service to water companies including full hazardous area ATEX expertise in installation and maintenance. Richard Gapper heads up the new operation as electrical divisional manager. He said: "Through Forward Utilities, the group has established a strong position as a provider of mechanical engineering solutions to the wider utilities sector and we are now extending this into electrical insulation solutions. We have a long- standing partnership with Thames Water which has seen us setting up purpose-built facilities at their sewage treatment works at Maple Lodge in Rickmansworth and Long Reach in Dartford." Gapper continued: "This Forward Industrial creates electrical division for water sector onsite presence means that we can be pretty much instantly responsive to customer needs. Through the new division, we can now offer this level of service for turnkey mechanical and electrical solutions to the wider water industry." Forward Electrical will offer a full package of services based on identification of needs, costing and supply through to installation, testing and commissioning together with ongoing maintenance support. Employing a team of multi- skilled personnel, the operation's accreditations include ISO 9001, Achilles JQS Qualified, UVDB2 Verified, NICEIC Approved Contractors and Gas Safe. A niche offering is Forward's ability to undertake hazardous area mechanical and electrical installations, dealing with potentially explosive environments such as gas lines or flammable liquid pipelines. Yorkshire Water picks four for £100M marine framework F our framework partners comprising ABCO Marine, Farrans Construction, Van Oord and Ward & Burke have been awarded Yorkshire Water's marine framework contract, which is worth up to £100M over the next five years. Between 2010 and 2015 Yorkshire Water spent £110M to help create some of the cleanest beaches and bathing waters in Europe. By working in U niversity of Sheffield researchers have created an aquatic robot that could be used to inspect otherwise inaccessible pipe networks to deal with blockages. The researchers' study looks at a set of robotic modules that, similar to Lego, can be assembled into robots of arbitrary shape. This allows robots to be customised to meet the changing demands of their task. Each module is a cube and has four micro pumps which allow it to move around independently in the water. When modules are joined together, they can draw in fluid from each other, as well as the environment. The routing of the fluid through the network of modules causes the robot to move. The more modules in the network, the more precisely the robot moves, and the better it copes with faults. This new concept is termed Modular Hydraulic Propulsion (MHP). Six prototype modules of an MHP robot were constructed, which float on the surface of water. The researchers set the robot a task – to detect and move towards a light source. The robots can solve this task reliably without having a central brain. Rather, each module makes its own decisions independently, and only needs a single byte of sensor information to do so. Dr Roderich Gross, from the Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering, who is leading the team, said: "One of the challenges in robotics is to make robots small enough so that they can travel through confined spaces that are otherwise inaccessible. Shrinking robots down, potentially to sub-millimetre scale, puts severe constraints on the hardware and therefore how much information these robots can process." Modular Hydraulic Propulsion could offer new solutions to problems requiring reconfigurable systems to move precisely in 3D confined spaces, such as the inspection of underground water pipes. Matthew Doyle, a PhD student from the Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering who has been working on the project, said: "One potential use for a robot like this is during search and rescue operations in an underwater environment. You may not know the situation in advance, and the robot will have to adapt to whatever it faces. This type of robot could also be used by utility firms wanting to deal with blockages or faults in pipes that are difficult and expensive to access from the surface." Aquatic robot can inspect inaccessible pipes taking a catchment- wide approach to improve flood resilience in the city, looking at how we can slow the flow in the upper reaches of the Ouse and Foss catch- ments as well as new flood defences." partnership with other organisations the company aims to secure and maintain the highest possible water quality standard at Yorkshire's designated bathing beaches. The latest framework will see the four partners undertake all the company's marine civil engineering work. They will install new sea outfall pipes, carry out site investigations and planned maintenance to improve existing outfall assets. This type of work requires specialist marine plant and work vessels and commercial divers are oen necessary. The first of these framework projects is worth £7M and involves replacing the long sea outfall at Wheatcro in Scarborough, which discharges consented wastewater from the washing and processing of potatoes into the sea at Cornelian Bay. Van Oord has already started construction on this 2.5km pipeline. Nevil Muncaster, Yorkshire Water's director of asset management, said: 'This framework has been designed to build on the work we've carried out over the last five years to improve Yorkshire's bathing waters. We are confident our partners will deliver the best possible solutions for us and the water environment, at the best price with the highest levels of safety.' Maurits den Broeder, managing director for Van Oord UK, said: ''We are delighted that Yorkshire Water has selected Van Oord onto their framework and we look forward to working together with a strong team of marine professionals to improve water quality on the Yorkshire coast." The four partners are undertaking all Yorkshire Water's marine civil engineering work Exceptionally high rainfall and river levels led to extensive flooding in York

• Cover