2025 UK/Europe TUFLOW Conference: The Human Element
Time: 9 AM - 5 PM
Date: May 20, 2025 - May 21, 2025
Address: M Shed, Princes Wharf, Wapping Road, Bristol BS1 4RN
The return of the successful TUFLOW UK/Europe Conference
Pen Portraits Tickets Card PaymentsTUFLOW 2025 UK/Europe Conference
Over the past decade there have been significant advances in the discipline of flood modelling but there have also been major changes in the understanding of our environment and the need for society to adapt. Following on from our TUFLOW 2023 UK/Europe Conference – Roadmap to the Future, our TUFLOW 2025 Conference, The Human Element, focusses on how our modelling effects and is affected by the human beings that interact with it.
Our objectives remain the same for the conference namely to:
•Invite the best speakers from the public sector, industry, and academia.
•Present novel and innovative uses of the TUFLOW software.
•Educate, inform, and help users to exploit the capability of the software.
•Listen to the needs and ideas of users to ensure that TUFLOW remains the software of choice for hydrodynamic modellers in the future.
The two-day conference once again heads to the Bristol M Shed an iconic venue in the heart of Bristol.
Our programme is filling rapidly, and we are delighted to announce that this year our Keynote Address will be presented by Professor Anusha Shah who is senior director, resilient cities at Arcadis and the 159th President of the ICE.
A native of Kashmir, Anusha is keenly aware of the need to adapt to climate change. As with our 2023 Address on Sponge Cities governments are often dealing with increasingly violent weather patterns extreme flooding events and drought. The latter is a real danger to people living in delicately balanced ecosystems like those at the base of the Himalaya, where the winter snows melt through the spring and summer to fill the rivers below. As the global temperatures rise, the mountains are no longer the abode of snow, and the rivers run dry.
TUFLOW’s creator Bill Syme (BMT) and John Young (EVY), two of our industry’s wise old hands will be giving a presentation entitled ‘A retrospective look back’ A journey through their time in the industry and how it has changed, whether things have changed in the way they imagined, whether those changes are meeting the needs of their clients and in the spirit of the conference, the needs of the wider community.
We are also incredibly happy to be welcoming back David Balmforth, Visiting Professor at Imperial College London, Past President of the ICE and former chair of the Reservoirs Committee. He has been an excellent Conference Chair at previous TUFLOW Conferences, and we look forward to his keeping us in check and setting the tone for the panel discussions.
A note on new payments
As we don’t run these conferences more than once every 18 months it does not make sense to maintain a card payment system directly through our bank, however, you now have the opportunity to pay through Stripe on our website. If you wish to pay for your TUFLOW 2025 UK/Europe User Conference ticket by credit/debit card, please select the option to receive an invoice when booking your ticket via the Eventbrite page.
Please feel free to contact our Accounts Team for further details.
Programme Highlights
Pen Portraits & Presentation Summaries
Presentation Title TBC
Professor Anusha Shah
Pen Portrait
Prof. Anusha Shah is the immediate past President of the Institution of Civil Engineers. She is only the third woman and first person of colour to have held this post in over 205 years of the Institution’s history.
Anusha is a Senior Director for Resilient Cities and UK Climate Adaptation Lead for Arcadis in London. A Non-Executive Director for UK Met Office, Trustee at the Green Alliance, she is a Visiting Professor at University of Edinburgh and lectures widely in many universities, including University of Oxford and Cambridge. Anusha is also a past chair of the Thames Estuary board. She has over 24 years’ experience in designing, managing and leading water, environment and wider infrastructure projects in the UK and globally.
She was honoured with Doctor of Engineering by University of East London and also Heriot Watt University for her services to climate change and with Honorary Professorship by University of Wolverhampton for Knowledge exchange and recently with Amity University in India.
She has contributed to several national and international articles and reports on water, climate change, equity and inclusion topics and has won multiple awards including UK’s Top 50 Women Engineers in Sustainability and CECA Inspiring Engineers Award.
Flooding - Plan, prepare and better protect
Mary Long-Dhonau OBE
Pen Portrait
Mary has extensive experience in supporting and advising the victims of flooding during their recovery. Having been flooded herself on many occasions, she champions the effective use of Property Flood Resilience (PFR) measures and is vocally passionate about raising awareness of flood risk and PFR /Build Back Better to homeowners, communities, local authorities, government and relevant industries, including insurance and construction. Mary spends much of her time travelling around flood effected parts of the country in a ‘Floodmobile’ (a house on wheels packed full of resilience produces) supporting those newly flooded in their recovery.
Mary has represented the ‘voice of the flood victim’ at government level, she appears regularly on national TV and radio during a flood event and speaks at many flood risk management, national and international conferences.
Mary runs her own consultancy FloodMary.com specialising in PFR. She is the author of an eBook ‘Property Flood Resilience (PFR). Stories from homes and businesses who have made adaptations to help them recover more quickly after a flood’ Mary is the co-author of the Household Guide to PFR, & the Household Guide to Flood Recovery.
She is on the steering group of the PRF round table and spearheaded the award-winning Cumbria Property Resilience round table.
Mary was awarded an OBE for Services to the Environment in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in 2009. In Dec 2014 she was awarded a HonRICS, in recognition of her high profile for standing up for the public interest regarding flooding. Mary was also given the ‘Voice of the Customer ‘award at the CII Public Interest Awards 2015 and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of the West of England in July 2015 and was made a Hon Fellow of CIWEM in May 2017. Mary was awarded the CIWEM possibility category ’Spotlight’ award at the annual Environment Agency conference in June 2024 and was a Big Issue ‘Changemaker’ for 2025.
Abstract
Mary will highlight the appalling experience of being flooded from her own perspective, having been a victim of repeated flood events herself and those of the many people she has helped over the last 25 years. Including the distress and inconvenience of not being able to return home for an average of nine months after a flood event.
With the impact of Climate Change making flood events ever more likely, she will also explore how those at risk can better protect their homes and will give examples of some inspirational case studies.
Panel Discussion
Professor David Balmforth (Chair)
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David Balmforth is an independent consultant specialising in flood risk management and urban pollution control. He has extensive experience of delivering multi million pound engineering programmes in the water industry and is currently a member of an international panel advising the Singapore Government on Climate Change and Coastal Defence. He is a member of Defra’s Roundtable on Property Flood Resilience and in 2021 he completed a Government Review of Reservoir Safety following the Toddbrook reservoir incident. David is a Visiting Professor at Imperial College London and a Past President of the Institution of Civil Engineers.
A Word from Our Chair
I’m excited about being back in Bristol to chair the TUFLOW conference once more and especially given this year’s theme “the Human Element”. We all know, of course, that in everything we do, as modellers, engineers and scientists, we do for the public good. We support economic growth, we protect the environment and we defend people from floods. We are inspired by our work. But I wonder how others see that. Do the public welcome our schemes? Do other professions look to us for insight into the needs of society? Do we inspire the young?
These are challenging questions and I am not expecting them to all be answered at the conference. But what I will be seeking are the numerous nuggets of learning that will come from the wide variety of presentations. These will take us further on our journey towards those answers. I know there will be much to gather from our keynote address. But I’m also setting a challenge for all our presenters, and indeed for our delegates through the questions they ask.
No, I am not expecting us to deviate from the traditional technical elements that are central to the conference. These will always be at the heart of what we do. I just want us to understand more about how we might better engage with society and how the tools that we use might help with that. A recently completed programme of research that I have been engaged with at Imperial College has showed how we can adapt our tools to better engage with communities. Tools that focus on helping public understanding and collective decision making. How we can use these to bring the public and other stakeholders into our work cycle.
When I once asked a Swedish engineer how he got such good engagement with the public, he said “I have them working alongside me in the office”. Now there’s a thought!
Certain about Uncertainty
Bill Syme, TUFLOW Lead, Brisbane, Australia
Pen Portrait
Bill has 40 years’ experience primarily in the flood hydraulics field. During this time, he successfully managed and led a wide range of studies in Australia and overseas. The widely used TUFLOW hydrodynamic modelling software was first developed by Bill starting in 1989.
Today, Bill is BMT’s Software Business Lead, managing TUFLOW’s global operations, and continues to provide specialist hydraulic modelling and flood risk management advice. He was the Project Manager for the award-winning Brisbane River Flood Study Hydraulic Assessment. In 2022, Bill received the FMA Allan Ezzy Flood Risk Manager of the Year Award, and delivered the Henderson Oration at the 2022 HWRS Conference.
Abstract
Hydrological, hydraulic and eco-hydraulic models are representations of systems. The representation requires abstraction and parameterisation of physical world processes into mathematical models. The abstractions range from simplistic to complex and the parametrisations can span from well definable through to too hard to define. Consideration of the uncertainties in the modelling process is paramount to using models robustly and in successfully communicating the outcomes of modelling activities to stakeholders and the wider community.
This presentation focuses on where the uncertainties occur during the modelling process and the potential for impacting outcomes. Aspects covered include:
Input and validation data, choice of physics, solution schemes, schematisation of system components, parametrisation of processes, validation of models, dissemination of results, and options to manage the uncertainty in practice.
The presentation will be of value to people relatively new to modelling through to experienced modellers, along with stakeholders who will benefit from enhancing their understanding of modelling uncertainty and how to manage uncertainty in practice.
Demystifying TUFLOW FV Workshop
Dr Duncan Kitts, TUFLOW UK/Europe Lead, Leeds UK
Pen Portrait
Duncan is a principal scientist and UK/Europe lead for TUFLOW, with 18 years’ experience in hydraulic modelling and flood risk management. Duncan has worked in many different aspects of flood risk and erosion management with a particular focus on hydraulic modelling including fluvial and pluvial flood modelling, integrated urban drainage as well as flood forecasting, water quality and sediment transport modelling. Duncan has spent the last 14 years working for various flood modelling software houses and has provided training to a range of governmental agencies and technical consultants internationally.
Abstract
TUFLOW FV is the flexible mesh solver within the TUFLOW suite of products which provides an array of source-to-sea environmental modelling functionality which lend itself to the analysis of more complex hydrodynamics, sediment transport and water quality all of which are becoming more important in the world we live in. This TUFLOW FV workshop will take attendees through the process of generating a TUFLOW FV model from scratch to apply to 3D hydrodynamics, sediment transport and water quality for the purpose of analysing a Combined Sewer Overflow spill.
The workshop aims to demystify TUFLOW FV utilising open tools to quickly design an efficient flexible mesh without the daunting methodology of old, utilising python scripts to automate the collection, collation and conversion of meteorological data from the Copernicus ERA5 dataset as input into the TUFLOW FV as boundary conditions and the use of the QGIS and python tools for the subsequent results analysis. The workshop will be run through 3 sessions, where each session builds on the previous session but can be undertaken as a standalone workshop. The individual sessions will cover:
• Session 1
o Introduction to TUFLOW FV
o Modern Meshing with Aquaveo SMS
o Introduction to the TUFLOW FV Python Toolbox
• Session 2
o 3D modelling
o Automated Complex Boundary Conditions
• Session 3
o Sediment Transport
o Water Quality
A retrospective look back
John Young-Edenvale Young/Bill Syme - TUFLOW
Further details to follow shortly.