Flood Aware, Informed and Resilient Communities

Background

A FAIR approach to community flood risk, helping communities becoming Flood Aware, Informed and Resilient.

Staffordshire County Council has secured funding from the Defra flood and coastal resilience innovation programme for the next 6 years to provide practical innovative actions to improve resilience to flooding. This will allow communities in Staffordshire, Stoke, and the Black Country to be more resilient to flooding through innovation and engagement.

We know that different communities have different levels of flood risk, and already have different levels of protection and resilience. Through this project we want to help all vulnerable communities become better aware, informed and resilient. We’ll do this by working with communities at risk to become better prepared, protected and self-sustainable.

When we talk about communities becoming more resilient we mean the ability of residents, businesses and communities across Staffordshire to maintain living standards, health and financial security in respect of flood risk now and in the future, with the capacity to manage change and with the frameworks to support medium and longer term prospects.

We have established a set of guiding principles, comprising a purpose, focus, mission statement and values.

Purpose

To support communities across the region to become more aware, informed and resilient to flooding, working collaboratively with professionals to better plan protect, respond and recover in a sustainable way.

Focus

Improve community flood resilience via innovation and community engagement so that communities are more self-sustainable, whilst continually actively and reflectively assessing actions for continual improvement and future learning.

Mission Statement

To empower all types of communities at risk of flooding in Staffordshire to become better prepared, protected and ready to respond in collaboration with professionals. This will be achieved by supporting the development of communities that can work effectively with professionals and providing effective local flood monitoring, forecasting and flood warning systems (supported by technology such as Artificial Intelligence and in-situ monitoring), the toolkits for communities to coordinate their own planning and response with partners, and the physical interventions to reduce risk.

Values

Key Tasks

As part of improving community flood resilience, the key tasks involved in this project are:

• To establish a community framework and infrastructure for a FAIR approach to flood resilience in Staffordshire, Stoke, and the Black Country.
• To develop a web-based community accessible tool and telephone contact point for local flood monitoring, warning, and assistance.
• To establish in-situ monitoring of infrastructure and utilize machine learning image processing to integrate flood forecasting within the web-based tool.
• To install physical protection measures appropriate to the risk and community.

Key Stakeholders

As part of improving community flood resilience, the key tasks involved in this project are:

• Staffordshire County Council and Staffordshire Civil Contingencies Unit
• Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council
• Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council
• Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council
• Stoke-on-Trent City Council
• Wolverhampton City Council
• University of Reading
• Birmingham City University
• National Flood Forum
• Environment Agency
• JBA Consulting