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1. Sue Illman photographed at the Landscape Institute Awards 2023. © Andrew Mason
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Redirect the flow Josh Cunningham During her tenure as President of the Landscape Institute, Sue Illman, together with representatives from 12 other organisations, wrote to the then prime minister David Cameron, calling for long-term planning to prevent the devastation caused by flooding. Published in the Daily Telegraph on 20 February 2014, the letter became a frontpage news story, and was picked up widely in the media. The letter was sparked by a long winter of flooding across the UK – from the Somerset Levels to the Thames Valley and to Tyneside. In the media that Sue was soon to weigh in on, aerial shots of flooded towns and villages joined images of devastated infrastructure facilities, and army personnel lugging sandbags through floodwater. 'Elderly and vulnerable 10
A past president of the Landscape Institute and recent recipient of an ‘Outstanding Contribution to SuDS’ award by CIRIA,¹ Sue Illman is a landscape architect whose career has changed the landscape of water management. But she isn’t happy yet. people, who couldn’t get out of their house when it rained,' remembers Sue, who lives close to some of the worst affected areas. 'And if they were already out of their house when it started, then they couldn’t get back in. It was horrible.' In the decade since, flash flooding has again hit the UK in 2016, 2019 and 2020, while hugely devastating floods have occurred internationally in Pakistan, China, India, and most recently across the Mediterranean, with thousands killed in Storm Daniel. With climate change thought to be increasing the intensity and
'supercharging the rainfall'² of such storms, keeping flood prevention at the top of the political agenda is paramount. Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) provide a nature-based solution to water management. Rather than concrete culverts and subterranean pipes, set within the hard urban landscapes that have come to dominate many built environments, SuDS offer the opportunity to use living systems of soil and vegetation to manage water. Providing exactly the kind of integrated solutions that landscape architects are known for,
Construction Industry Research and Information Association. 1
Henson, Masters (2023), Yale Climate Connections. https://yaleclimate connections.org/ 2023/09/the-libyafloods-a-climateand-infrastructurecatastrophe/ 2
