DIGITAL & STRATEGIC
UX DESIGN PRACTICE
DIGITAL DISCOVERY
Using New Technologies To Improve Communities' Flood Resilience
Resilience is good honest communication with at-risk areas.
Explore the potential to use new technologies to create an early warning flood service for six communities in the North of England.
Date
Location
A high-level early flood warning service proposition, including 4 proposed types of service to users. Defined through stakeholders’ interviews and community workshops, the types of services aim to improve the resilience of communities and to reduce their vulnerability.
The user focused delivery offered a space for community members and professional groups to share their flooding experiences and to be directly involved in crafting a digital proposition with actionable outcomes and ultimately in shaping how to improve their flooding experiences.
"Resilience is not about stopping water, but about how quickly a community can bounce back"
FLOOD RESPONSE COMMUNITY LIAISON
As part of the DEFRA Flood and Coastal Resilience Innovation Programme, a partnership was set up to tackle the challenges faced by rural communities affected by fast and localised flooding events and for which the existing Environment Agency’s flood warnings is not available.
Northumberland was identified as its geography is rural and its communities are disproportionally challenged in managing flood risk. Six communities were chosen to take part in this project: Haltwhistle, Acomb, Riding Mill, Stocksfield, Ovingham and Hepscott.
Arup conducted a user focused discovery phase to investigate the potential to build an early warning system that would help improve the resilience of the identified communities. This process was informed by in-depth interviews with stakeholders and responders, as well as by workshops organised to understand the point of view and challenges faced by local community members.
Arup’s process enabled the definition of 4 options of services that would serve the various needs of users such as flood wardens, local community members and responders.
The first option addresses the key need to receive a warning 8 hours before an event to be able to understand what actions might need to be taken. The second option offers users the possibility to receive different levels of information at different time, addressing the need for timely information and allowing to raise awareness over time of the probability of an event. The third and fourth options build upon the second one and are tailored, respectively, for responders and communities. The third option aims to ease coordination between responder groups by acting as a single source of truth for updates of actions being taken by all responders and for live feeds from flood warden, water levels and forecast. The fourth option acts as a community hub to raise awareness, provide educational content and to offer a platform for broader engagement to community members.
This discovery phase was completed in early 2022, and it was recommended that the programme proceeds to Alpha which should last 15 months from September 2022. Following this, the project should then enter a Beta phase until the service goes live in early 2027.
