Student wins flood defence award
Bournemouth University student, Simon Phelps, has just received the Emergency Planning Society's Most Innovative Product of the Year 2009 award for his Floodstop design
One in 10 houses in the UK are under threat of flooding, but sandbags have proved woefully inadequate at providing an efficient line of defence. For his final year project as part of his Computer Aided Design Course at Bournemouth University, Simon Phelps developed the Floodstop modular flood barrier. The barrier is constructed of a number of units (pods) that quickly clip together to form a barrier against the rising water.
The Floodstop units contain foam which actually fill with the rising flood water. This combined with the weighted connections keys, means that an assembled barrier will always be denser than the flood water – anchoring them in place. Each pod incorporates a unique foam gasket base. When the foam gasket is placed under pressure by the self-filling units a seal with the ground is created.
The beauty of this patented system is that no bolting to the ground is required. It also means that when the flood waters recede, the pods empty themselves and become light enough to be carried away.
Simon has just received the Emergency Planning Society's Most Innovative Product of the Year 2009 award. He has set up a company to sell the product: Fluvial Innovations Ltd www.fluvial-innovations.co.uk . The Environment Agency has trialed the Floodstop system to protect Sandwich Quay in Kent where it has been implemented to reduce flood risk and protect a significant number of properties there until permanent defenses are built in 2013.
