Understand Flood Risk with Autodesk InfoDrainage

Why Early-Stage Evidence Now Decides Planning Outcomes

The Environment Agency’s National Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Assessment 2024 shows that about 6.3 million properties in England already fall inside a flood risk area. Storms Babet, Ciarán and Debi then pushed weather related home insurance claims to a record £573 million in 2023.

In pre-application meetings, Lead Local Flood Authorities open with a single request: ‘Illustrate the flood depths as risks before we consider your layout’. If a designer combines pipe hydraulics with surface flow in a traditional spreadsheet delivery, several days – and considerable goodwill – are lost before a concept can be priced.

What the ‘ML Deluge’ Tool Provides for your Designs

Autodesk’s Machine Learning Deluge routine builds a first flood-depth mesh, as soon as you load the ground model and choose a design storm profile (FEH 13, ReFH 2 or legacy FSR).

Because the engine combines pipe locations and networks with realistic surface areas in the same calculation, the adjustment of a single manhole invert immediately updates surcharge tables and flood extents at the same time.

• Live ‘what if’ design – click to place a retention basin, swale or raised verge and the map recolours in seconds, so stakeholders see the hydraulic impact while options are still on the table.
• Export on demand – depth grids publish straight to DWG, SHP or geoTIFF for CAD overlays or for stakeholder engagement.
• Build-in climate uplift – FEH and ReFH storms can be run with the latest Environment Agency allowances without external look-up tables.

A 5-Step Starter Recipe

1. Import topography – Civil 3D surface, LandXML, or ASCII grid.
2. Add the baseline network – drag manholes and pipes or read from CSV or DWG.
3. Run ML Deluge – choose the one hundred year plus climate change storm and review baseline depths.
4. Iterate controls – detention pond, swale or permeable pavement. Use undo and redo to compare footprints.
5. Generate a stakeholder pack – one click PDF with the flood map, legend and return period notes.

What Planners and Designers Gain

Planning officers receive a colour coded flood extent tied to officially recognised storms, so drainage questions are settles in the first review round. Designers spend time on true option-based engineering rather than using older processes such as schedule manipulation and data interrogation, and architects can agree building footprints earlier with confidence that run-off will flow to the intended outfall.

Therefore, ML Deluge converts flood risk unknowns into real-time graphics that win trust at pre-application stage, and keep projects moving towards swift approval.