"You can't put an umbrella over the city" - how climate change could cause more Hull floods
Prof Tom Coulthard from the University of Hull said we might have to learn to live with floods.
Hull could be at further risk of flooding in the future due to climate change, according to a new report. The National Audit Office has said the government is underprepared for the impact of extreme weather events such as flooding.
Ten years on from the 2013 tidal floods that affected over 250 properties in the city, Hull City Council have said ÂŁ42 million has been invested to protect Hull from flooding. A professor at the University of Hull has said flooding may be something the city has to get used to, as climate change brings about more extreme weather events like flooding, storms and even droughts.
Prof Tom Coulthard, who specialises in physical geography at the University of Hull said: "It's difficult to keep on building flood defences higher and higher - you can't put an umbrella over the whole city.
"You can make flood defences better we've also got to think about living with flooding a bit more and take measures so that when flooding happens it doesn't affect us as much as it does in the past."
Prof Coulthard said although Hull's flood defences have worked very well in protecting the city, house designs might have to change in future to make individual homes - as well as the city as a whole - more resilient to flooding.
He said: "Because of its low-lying position it's at risk from flooding from the estuary, surface water flooding like flash flooding, and from flooding from the river Hull. Flooding from all of those factors is made more likely by climate change happening.
"It might make some events worse but it also makes bad events more likely, so instead of having a storm surge every 10 or 20 years you might start having one every five years and in the future maybe even every two years."
The National Audit Office report said the Cabinet Office "currently does not have clearly defined targets, or an effective strategy in place to make the UK resilient to extreme weather."
A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “The best way to protect people, businesses and communities from extreme weather events is by having systems in place that are both robust and flexible. This is core to the UK's resilience strategy, which has been proven to allow us to effectively coordinate the Government and wider resilience community’s response to a diverse set of risks – having successfully dealt with a series of severe weather events this autumn.
“As the Deputy Prime Minister set out this week, we are making excellent progress on building flexible and agile capabilities, systems and strategies which ensure the UK is prepared for emerging threats. This includes constantly improving our systems, for example vastly increasing the number of datasets being fed into the National Situation Centre, and launching a new 24/7 Emergency Alerts system in April, which is able to deliver warnings and information to the public.”