Joint Defra/EA Flood and coastal erosion risk management R&D Programme
Incident Management and Community Engagement (IMC) Theme
Theme Manager - Doug Whitfield (Environment Agency)
Recent Theme Outputs
- September 2008: Modelling extreme rainfall events
- October 2007: Probabilistic Flood Forecasting Scoping Study
Further information is available for all ongoing and published research within this theme.
Background
Flood incident management is a very complex system. It is comprised of flood forecasting and warning, raising public awareness, communication before during and after an incident, effective emergency planning and exercising, co-operation between emergency services and effective aftercare. There are a range of key organisations involved which adds complexity.
But successful flood incident management can play a vital role in minimising the consequences of flooding incidents, and in helping people to live with flood risk. The two principal purposes of flood forecasting and warning are to save lives by allowing people, support and emergency services to prepare for flooding and to reduce the damaging effects of flooding by giving people time to take appropriate action, like protecting their property. In addition an effective flood forecasting and warning system informs operating authorities of the need to operate structures, temporary defences or other control structures, and initiate other elements of the flood incident management system. The success of the flood incident management system in achieving these goals depends on a number of factors. These include geographical coverage of the service; its reliability; the ability of people to act on a warning; the effectiveness of action taken.
This programme seeks to ensure that future performance targets both for incident management of flood events by the Environment Agency and for community response to flood events are met. As the sponsoring ministry, Defra will wish to ensure that improvements to systems and techniques are carried out to meet public expectations and to cover the full range of flood situations likely to be experienced by people at risk. This will involve this programme in investigation of solutions to non-river flooding situations.
Page last modified: 1 October 2008
Page published: 19 April 2004