A UWL researcher will use artificial intelligence to reduce flood risks in the UK and across the world – drastically improving quality of life for residents thanks to a prestigious funding grant.

Dr Kourosh Behzadian is one of seven researchers awarded The Royal Academy of Engineering’s Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship this year as he continues to develop smart drainage systems to bring about ‘significant benefit’ to society and the economy.

Also tackling environmentally friendly and sustainable solutions to flood water management, work will make use of artificial intelligence to prevent local flooding by monitoring, planning and diverting discharge of water from the drainage system before heavy rain occurs.

Testing will be carried out on a few pilot studies in London to see how systems can significantly improve the quality of life for residents by developing smart sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) and reducing flood risk.

Dr Behzadian, Associate Professor at UWL’s School of Computing and Engineering, said:

The operation of current drainage systems in the UK and abroad is adversely affected by climate change, ageing infrastructure and its limited capacity.

These factors often lead to system blockages and considerably increase the risks of urban flooding, cause environmental pollution and serious disruption to residents, and make regular inspection of infrastructure challenging.

Existing solutions also have poor performance because of high variability of weather data and remain costly. Therefore, I will develop novel AI-based sustainable drainage systems with new design and operational procedures to reduce flood risk in urban areas.