Evacuation and traffic management (full report) - FLOODsite

Task 17 Evacuation D17-1
Contract No:GOCE-CT-2004-505420
1.5 Pilot sites
There were three pilot sites that were utilised in Task 17 as follows:
• The Thames Estuary in the UK;
• The Schelde Estuary in the Netherlands;
• The Gard Region of France.
These are briefly described below. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 detail the inundation and evacuation modelling
that has been carried out for each of these pilot sites.
1.5.1 Thames Estuary
The Thames Estuary is the large estuary where the River Thames flows into the North Sea. The
estuary is one of the largest inlets on the coast of the UK. Saltmarshes and mudflats dominate the
area, although much of the length has man-made embankments where the land behind is now
cultivated or used for grazing. The inner Thames Estuary, now named Thames Gateway, on both
banks of the river, has been designated as one of the principal development areas in Southern England
by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, and much development is planned for this area (ABI,
2006). Two specific areas of interest have been researched with regards to evacuation and loss of life
modelling. These are the Thamesmead embayment located just downstream of the Thames Barrier
and Canvey Island that is located in the mouth of the estuary. One of the objectives of such an
approach was to identify the usefulness of the output of such models to emergency planners for use in
the planning stage of evacuation planning. This work is discussed in detail in Chapter 5.
1.5.2 Schelde Estuary
The Schelde pilot site is located near the south-western border of the Netherlands and Belgium and
covers the tidally influenced part of the Schelde River. The Dutch part of the river is called
‘Westerschelde’ and is a typical estuary with multiple river branches and inter-tidal mud flats. The
areas of interest in which evacuation models have been applied within the Schelde pilot are all within
the province of Zeeland and comprise the following areas:
• Walcheren;
• Zuid-Beveland West;
• Zuid-Beveland East.
Walcheren is piece of land that used to be an island. However, polders and a dam across the Sloe
strait now connected it to the (former) island of Zuid-Beveland, which in turn has been connected to
the North Brabant mainland. Walcheren lies between the Oosterschelde in the north and the
Westerschelde in the south and is roughly the shape of a rhombus. Zuid-Beveland is also a piece of
land that used to be an island. It is now a peninsula, crossed by the Canal through Zuid-Beveland on
the west and the Schelde-Rhine Canal to the east. Evacuation models have been applied to these areas
to assist emergency planners in Zeeland to improving their planning of evacuations. This work is
detailed in Chapter 6.
1.5.3 Gard Region
The Gard River is in southern France. The Gard is 133 km long including its longest tributary
"Gardon de Saint-Jean". It rises in the Cévennes and discharges into the Rhône River. In September
2002 and again in December 2003, the Gard had record level floods that damaged many of its bridges
including the Pont Saint-Nicolas. In the 2002 floods 24 people were killed and the economic damage
was estimated at €1.2 billion. Many of the people that were killed were in cars that were swept away
(Gaume and Bouvier, 2004). As part of the work that is being carried out in the Gard Region a
prototype forecasting system to assess when roads will be inundated has been produced. This model
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