The availability and the use of information at property-level flood risk

This project reviewed sources of information about flood risk to individual properties, identified significant gaps, and explored how they might be addressed.

From:
Environment Agency, Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Research and Development Programme, and Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs
Published
19 February 2021
Category:
Increasing resilience to flooding
Topics:
Behavioural change, Communicating risk, Community response and resilience, Emergency planning, Flood risk assessment, Health, safety and wellbeing
Project status:
Completed
Project code:
FD2637
Date of completion:
31 March 2010

Documents

Availability and the use of information at property-level flood risk - technical report (2 MB) PDF

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Details

A variety of information is available to property owners / occupiers and others about flood risk. However, there’s no clear guidance about how to use the different sources of information appropriately.

Approach

This project reviewed the different sources of information and considered how suitable each one was for different purposes. It identified any significant gaps in how information about flood risk is provided to individual property owners / occupiers, and evaluated the costs, benefits and risks of addressing them.

Background

In 2008 there were 2.4 million properties at risk of flooding from rivers or the sea, and 560,000 of those are at significant risk. A million of these are also at risk of flooding from surface water. At the time there was no consistent approach to how information about flood risk was produced. There was also no way of bringing it all together to make it available in a sensible way for people concerned about individual properties.

This project was started in 2009 and completed in 2010 at a cost of £47,920.

Published 19 February 2021