FRIAR 2022 is the eighth conference of this successful series. The conference started at the Institution of Civil Engineers in London in 2008 and was reconvened in Milan in 2010, Dubrovnik in 2012, Poznan in 2014, Venice in 2016, A Coruna in 2018 and online in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Since 2012 a parallel seminar on the Design, Construction, Maintenance, Monitoring and Control of Urban Water has taken place which is now an integral part of the conference.

Flooding is a global phenomenon that claims numerous lives worldwide each year. When flooding occurs in urban areas, it can cause substantial damage to property as well as threatening human life. In addition, many more people must endure the homelessness, upset and disruption that are left in the wake of floods. The increased frequency of flooding in the last few years, coupled with climate change predictions and urban development, suggest that these impacts are set to worsen in the future. How we respond and importantly, adapt to these challenges is key to developing our long term resilience at the property, community and city scale.

Apart from the physical damage to buildings, contents and loss of life, which are the most obvious, impacts of floods upon households, other more indirect losses are often overlooked. These indirect and intangible impacts are generally associated with disruption to normal life as well as longer-term health issues including community displacements and stress-related illnesses. Flooding represents a major barrier to the alleviation of poverty in many parts of the developing world, where vulnerable communities are often exposed to sudden and life-threatening events.

As our cities continue to expand, their urban infrastructures need to be re-evaluated and adapted to new requirements related to the increase in population and the growing areas under urbanization. We also need to consider more nature-based interventions to the management of flood risk, including the adoption of more catchment-based approaches. These are now being recognised as being more sustainable and also able to achieve wider benefits to the environment and society as a whole.

This conference also considers these problems and deals with two main urban water topics: water supply systems and urban drainage. Topics such as contamination and pollution discharges in urban water bodies, as well as the monitoring of water recycling systems are currently receiving a great deal of attention from researchers and professional engineers working in the water industry. Water distribution networks often suffer substantial losses which represent wastage of energy and treatment. Effective, efficient and energy-saving management is necessary in order to optimize their performance. Sewer systems are under constant pressure due to growing urbanization and climate change, and the environmental impact caused by urban drainage overflows is related to both water quantity and water quality.

FRIAR seeks to develop an improved understanding of emerging flood risk management and urban water management challenges, drawing on the expertise of numerous disciplines and considering a range of responses. The conference provides a rich forum for the development of innovative solutions that can help bring about multiple benefits toward achieving integrated flood risk and urban water management strategies and policy.

The meeting is aimed to attract researchers, academics and practitioners actively involved in improving our understanding of urban water systems and flood events. It will bring together social scientists, surveyors, engineers, scientists, and other professionals from many countries involved in research and development activities in a wide range of technical and management topics related to urban water and flooding and its impacts on communities, property and people.

Papers presented at this conference, as all other meetings run by the Wessex Institute, are archived in the WIT eLibrary  and are easily and permanently available in Open Access format to the international community.