Flood risk and recovery
Aims
To create new tools and resources that help people to explore and better understand the social effects of flooding, and to promote flood resilience.
Overview
Professor Maggie Mort, main lead, explains:
“When we think about flooding, we imagine the immediate and visible effects such as streets underwater and people’s possessions ruined. But flooding – and the often lengthy and difficult recovery process – can dramatically affect people’s lives and livelihoods, impacting on physical health, wellbeing and community cohesion.
As well as presenting our data, we wanted to produce resources that could engage people in new ways. Our ‘archive’ on the social impacts of flooding makes all our data publicly available and shows people where and how to access it, as well as exploring ways it could be useful to different agencies, including a guide for flood risk practitioners on working with flood-affected people.
The archive also signposts people towards our digital, interactive tools such as Flood Snakes & Ladders which takes participants on a flood journey from a child’s perspective, Get Flood Ready! which aims to increase flood awareness in primary-aged children and Help Callum, a 360° VR video about a young boy flooded out of his home.
With these resources we’ve engaged practitioners, families and communities in a journey of dialogue and understanding around this major hazard. As people explore the resources, we see perceptions change and understanding increase.”
Results and Outcomes
Tab Content: For Partners and Engagement
Maggie explains the value of partnerships with government agencies, charities and businesses:
“The flood archive has helped organisations such as the Environment Agency to widen their reach and communicate with new audiences. Our work has been directly referenced in the National Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management (FCERM) Strategy for England to the year 2100. John Curtin, Executive Director at the Environment Agency has described our work as creating a ‘step change’ in how the agency views, and works with, young people.
Our work has highlighted the value of partnering with external bodies such as the Environment Agency to develop, pilot and promote the use of educational and awareness-raising resources based on social science research data.
Agencies and businesses see our work as adding to their value, creating innovative resources for mutual benefit. Together, we produce practical, accessible resources that help make sense of complex and generally ‘hidden’ problems.
A key feature we highlight is how young people’s voices can be made to emerge from research data. Policymakers and practitioners tell us how powerful it is to hear directly from young people and we have seen how this approach has real impact on the ground.”
“Our resources have been used by Hull City Council in community engagement events, by the Economic and Social Research Council in its Festival of Social Science, and have been embedded into two training courses by the British Damage Management Association, completed by thousands of participants.
Globally, our Flood Snakes & Ladders resource has been featured on a global knowledge platform by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, and we have collaborated with them on new international guidelines for emergency managers.
We have engaged with The Flood Hub which supports communities to manage flood risk across North West England, supporting them to feature our digital tools and other resources.
We have also engaged with children and young people across all ages via the Environment Agency’s engagement teams, who we have trained in the use of our resources. They are on target to reach many thousands of children and adults through their outreach programmes.”
Tab Content: For Academics
“It is not always obvious how we move beyond data and start to create interactive and engaging resources. Public sector bodies operate at different time scales, which can provide challenges for time-constrained research projects. This can mean valuable accounts from flood-affected people can be overlooked. But in working together, we can think beyond ‘traditional data sets’ to create new pathways for our work to help make a difference.”
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