Case study: Opening the floodgates of EU funding
Collaborative Research on Flood Resilience in Urban Areas (CORFU) is an international, interdisciplinary project that will look at advanced and novel strategies and provide adequate measures for improved flood management in cities. The project is co-ordinated by Professor Slobodan Djordjevic from the College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences, and will draw on his world-leading research in water systems. It features a large number of international partner organisations from both academic and commercial fields.
The differences in urban flooding problems in Asia and in Europe range from levels of economic development, infrastructure age, social systems and decision making processes, to prevailing drainage methods, seasonality of rainfall patterns and climate change trends. The project will look at seven key cities: Barcelona, Hamburg, Nice, Dhaka, Mumbai, Taipei, and Beijing, and is worth almost €3.5 million.
The project's vision is to use these differences to create synergies that will bring new quality to flood management strategies globally. Through a 4-year collaborative research programme, the latest technological advances will be cross-fertilised with traditional and emerging approaches to living with floods. The overall aim of CORFU is to enable European and Asian institutions to learn from each other through joint investigation, development, implementation and dissemination of strategies that will enable more scientifically sound management of the consequences of urban flooding in the future.
How RKT helped
Sam Irish and Enda Clarke were heavily involved in the proposal preparation. They provided assistance with administration and budget development, and advised on scheme rules and assistance with general parts of the proposal, for example the implementation plan and resources. After the proposal was successfully evaluated, Sam and Enda were instrumental in contract negotiations with the European Commission and partners with respect to budget, preparation of the project description, and the consortium agreement. They then advised further on project administration and gave a presentation to the project Kick Off meeting, regarding the various contractual and financial issues related to FP7 funding.
