The repeated occurrence of high profile flood events, both within the UK (e.g. Somerset Levels, 2014) and internationally (e.g. Australia and Thailand, 2011), has resulted in sustained public, commercial, political and scientific interest in flood risk. The heightened profile of flooding within the scientific community is reflected in the number of recent and current NERC thematic programmes dedicated wholly or in large part to this topic. The Hydrology Group at the University of Bristol has been involved in or led numerous programmes, with the result being a substantial improvement in our understanding of flood risk in data-rich regions such as the UK. However flooding is very clearly a worldwide phenomenon and consistent global hazard and risk products do not currently exist but are very urgently required by international governments and NGOs, and by British businesses. Looking to the future, the continued expansion of cities located on river floodplains and coastal deltas due to population growth and migration is expected to produce a significant increase in flood risk over the coming decades. The prospect is of particular concern to the (re)insurance market, a critical component of the UK financial services sector, as well as to global humanitarian and development organisations such as the World Bank and the United Nations World Food Programme. Recent losses have proven significant: household losses resulting from the summer 2007 floods in the UK reached £2.5 billion, with business losses accounting for a further £1 billion. The reinsurance firm Munich Re estimates that total economic losses from the Australian and Thailand events of 2011 were USD 2.8 billion and USD 40 billion respectively. Against this background and despite being largely focussed on UK flood risk the above mentioned recent NERC-funded programmes have yielded a number of important research developments that have started to close the knowledge gap that exists for global flood risk. Perhaps most critically, NERC funded research undertaken at the University of Bristol has yielded algorithms that allow very large scale flood models to be undertaken. Further NERC funded research has guided the development of model structures that allow models with global coverage to be developed. The Hydrology Group at the University of Bristol has built strong links with the insurance market through a long standing partnership with the Willis Research Network, Willis being one of the three dominant global reinsurance brokers. Through this relationship with Willis and other industry partners the potential to develop both freely available global flood hazard layers and commercial flood risk products was identified. Currently flood risk products appropriate for insurance and re-insurance markets exist in only a few territories worldwide. For many developed and emerging markets is near zero provision but significant and growing exposure. At the same time, freely available global flood hazard layers would be a significant benefit to humanitarian agencies such as the World Food Programme and international organisations with significant interests in risk reduction such as the World Bank. Therefore, this project will produce global flood hazard layers using state of the art methods developed as part of NERC funded science and provide massively open access to these via Google Earth. These layers will be the first global openly accessible assessment of flood hazard that can be used by Governments, NGOs and the entire global public thereby changing fundamentally global awareness of flood hazard and leading to a step change in flood resilience. We will then work with the global (re)insurance industry to identify commercial opportunities relating to this and related NERC funded science. The proposal is supported by Google, NASA-JPL, World Bank, World Food Programme, Willis, Mitsui Sumitomo, Montpelier-Re and the Universities of Reading and Newcastle.

We rely on access to water for so many important aspects of everyday life, for example: domestic water, food production, industrial production, transport, recreation, maintaining ecosystems, to name just a few. With increasing pressures on our water supplies from growing populations, climate changes and other factors, we need to continue to improve management of this precious resource if it is to remain a benefit to society. Good water management requires a sound knowledge of how much is present under different seasonal conditions, as well as how we use it and the consequences of this use, or potential overuse. Quantifying the highs and lows of the natural variability of water around us traditionally requires many decades of measurements to provide enough information to predict future availability. Unfortunately, this depth of water knowledge is not available for much of the world, and with our increasingly globalised societies this has consequences for all of us. Fortunately, improving international cooperation and a growing focus of water science on the global scale means that there are many recent developments that could be used to address this water knowledge gap. Scientists are developing increasingly accurate computer models of the global water cycle and proliferating satellites are measuring water from space in ever more detail. However, many people with a role in water management are not trained experts in either computer models or satellite data, limiting the value of this new data to everyday water challenges. This project will take the best data available from these exciting new science outputs, test it and make it available to all in an easy to use, online web map platform that will provide important water information anywhere in the world. Potential users of the platform will be involved at every stage of its development, ensuring it is directly useful and understandable. The easy to use platform will allow any user to get an independent, local estimate, of the range of water availability in their locality and help them understand the implications of the use of water as a resource, whether that is for irrigating crops, water for domestic supply or any other use. The project will also test the outputs of the platform for the Breede region of South Africa, where multiple, sometimes competing uses, of local water resources presents a challenge for fair access. An existing water stewardship project in the area, run by WWF-SA, has mobilised people and organisations with a direct interest in the fair management of water and they will be engaged in the local testing and improvement of the platform. The platform will be developed jointly by water@leeds scientists from the University of Leeds and the Earthwatch Institute, an international environmental charity with a track record of citizen involvement in global water science and the development of online platforms. Local South African expertise in water will be provided by Rhodes University, ensuring local relevance in the testing of the platform. The project will be guided by a number of key partners, WWF, Marks and Spencer, SSBN Ltd., as well as Richard Carter and Associates. The breadth of partners and their networks will ensure that a wide range of water issues will be represented, including; water risks to global food supply chains, environmental needs, and community water supply.