Flood defence and the surveyor: what's new?

The long historical background to flood defence is outlined. It is noted that many of the concerns and approaches are not new. However in some areas changes are occurring. The freshwater flooding across much of England and Wales in spring 1998 hastened new approaches to the relationship between flood defence agencies and the public. Recent published guidance on flood proof construction is described and reviewed and a role for the building surveyor is identified

Potential common law liability for privately provided flood defences

Public bodies have no statutory duty to provide flood defences and do not have funds available to meet all requests for them. This had led to recognition that flood prevention is not something to be left to others and there is now encouragement to householders to undertake “do it yourself” flood defence. Such measures are not without risk of damage to other properties. An investigation has therefore been undertaken to establish whether there is associated legal liability should such damage occur. No cases have been published directly concerning liability for damage resulting from these activities. However the Doctrine of Precedent declares that cases must be decided the same way when their material facts are the same. Cases are identified which have relevant similar material facts, although not arising from modern “do it yourself” flood defence. The ratio decidendi of cases concerning the receipt and passage of naturally flowing water, the increased passage of water to the property of others, and the overtopping or failure of structures that have held back water is examined. These cases are then discussed in the context of home flood defence. It is concluded that protecting one’s property from flooding is legally a relatively safe activity

Should the structure have been underpinned? - reflection after a quarter of a century

A case study of a domestic structure that suffered damage as a result of foundation movement in the 1970s is examined. Conclusions and recommendations made at the time are re-visited in the light of limitations of the original site investigation and subsequent performance of the structure

Attitudes towards waste minimisation amongst labour only sub-contractors

Waste generation by the construction industry is a significant issue for the industry and for society generally. The paper examines previous studies of attitudes to waste management within the industry and by means of a small questionnaire study sets out to examine: the extent of labour only sub-contractors’ awareness and understanding of waste as an issue, their perceptions of the causes of waste and their attitudes towards the allocation of financial responsibility for waste minimisation. The survey shows that the results of previous studies can be extended to labour only sub-contractors and it identifies a willingness, beyond what might have been anticipated for this group, to accept some of the costs of waste reduction

Mortgage valuation report forms and the identification of subsidence

This paper examines whether surveyors engaged in mortgage valuation inspections using questionnaire style report forms supplied by lending institutions, are subject to an increased risk of liability in respect of identifying the present and future threat of subsidence to domestic properties. Analysis of the mortgage valuation report forms used by 34 different lending institutions, showed that 20% failed to ask any subsidence related questions, only 6% asked about the geology or soil type of the site, and only 9% asked about the location of trees relative to the building. Evaluation of the report forms showed that the type, quality and quantity of questioning were such that 24 out of the 34 were inadequate and unreliable, leaving the surveyor at an increased risk of litigation

Empirical geodesic graphs and CAT(k) metrics for data analysis

A methodology is developed for data analysis based on empirically constructed geodesic metric spaces. For a probability distribution, the length along a path between two points can be defined as the amount of probability mass accumulated along the path. The geodesic, then, is the shortest such path and defines a geodesic metric. Such metrics are transformed in a number of ways to produce parametrised families of geodesic metric spaces, empirical versions of which allow computation of intrinsic means and associated measures of dispersion. These reveal properties of the data, based on geometry, such as those that are difficult to see from the raw Euclidean distances. Examples of application include clustering and classification. For certain parameter ranges, the spaces become CAT(0) spaces and the intrinsic means are unique. In one case, a minimal spanning tree of a graph based on the data becomes CAT(0). In another, a so-called "metric cone" construction allows extension to CAT($k$) spaces. It is shown how to empirically tune the parameters of the metrics, making it possible to apply them to a number of real cases.Comment: Statistics and Computing, 201