Flood, Vulnerability and Urban Resilience

Flood, vulnerability and urban resilience: a real-time study of local recovery following the floods of June 2007 in Hull

What was the study about?

This research ran for two years between 2007 and 2009. Using diaries, interviews and group discussions, the study followed the recovery experiences of people across Hull after the floods of June 2007 which affected over 8,600 households across the city.

(See story about this project and its outputs on the LWEC website)

It had the following objectives:

• To identify and document key dimensions of the longer term experience of flood impact and flood recovery, including health, economic and social aspects.
• To examine how resilience and vulnerability were manifest in the interaction between everyday strategies of adaptation during the flood recovery process, and modes of institutional support and the management of infrastructure and the built environment.
• To explore to what extent the recovery process entailed the development of new forms of resilience and to identify the implications for developing local level resilience for flood recovery in the future.
• To develop an archive that will be accessible for future research into other aspects of flood recovery.

Findings

The research shows flood recovery to be a long and difficult process with no clear beginning or end. Far from being an incremental, linear process, respondents’ recovery is punctuated by ‘highs’ and ‘lows’ which are closely tied to other pressures and life events. Recovery is not complete when people move ‘back home’, as aspects of daily life are shown to have fundamentally changed – both for better and for worse.

Many of the difficulties experienced by residents result from the existence of a ‘recovery gap’. This emerges as the legally-defined contingency arrangements provided to the community by its local authority diminish and the less well-defined services provided by the non statutory/private sector (e.g. insurance, builders) start.

The nature of this gap means that residents receive little support during this time and, as a result, they must attempt to coordinate the actions of the different organizations involved. Such ‘project management’ is time-consuming, exhausting and stressful as it requires residents to acquire new skills, challenge ‘expert’ judgements and engage in new kinds of physical, mental and emotional work.

What tools are available?

• A unique archive of data has been established to promote future learning and allow secondary analysis.
• The data archive will be made available through the Economic and Social Data Service (http://www.esds.ac.uk). This will include material from the diaries and audio files of people talking about their experiences of flood recovery. The data will be available for both academic researchers, companies and the public to use.
• A 'Flood Snakes and Ladders' tool is currently being developed. This is an interactive flood simulation recovery tool which was developed using material from the diaries. The tool can be used to train policy makers and emergency planners and can be applied to other emergency situations, as well as flooding. The tool will also be of interest to insurance companies and builders who are involved in flood recovery.
• A prototype of the tool has been tested by the Cabinet Office emergency planning team.

How are the outputs being used?

Policy makers

The knowledge from the project has been input at the highest level and has contributed to a number of national government Acts, reviews and consultations, such as

• the Flood and Water Management Act 2010
• the Pitt Review into the floods of Summer 2007 (see Defra response to the Pitt Review pdf)
• Defra consultations on property-level flood resistence and resilience measures, the national flood emergency framework
• Environment Agency internal policy on flood recovery
• as part of the steering group, the researchers make recommendations on national policy documents to the Cabinet Office community resilience programme
• the researchers also met with a visitor from the USA as part of the UK Civil Contigencies Secretariat Programme for Community Resilience.

The programme has also made contributions to local councils such as

• Stockport, Oldham and Tameside emergency exercise board
• Cumbria County Council welfare recovery group
• Greater Manchester Authorities Flood Planning Awareness Session
• Lincolnshire County Council Emergency planners

Society

The findings from the study have had a direct impact on local people, for example, the researchers have

• led workshops with flooded residents in Cumbria
• met with Cumbria primary care trust to discuss recovery issues
• contributed to regional workshop of Rotherham and Doncaster mental health trust

Business

In order to bring the findings to all people involved in the flood recovery process, the researchers have

• held meetings with senior insurance claims people to discuss findings from Hull research, hosted by the Association of British Insurers
• presentated at the British Damage Management Association annual convention - this involves companies involved in drying out and restoration of flooded homes.

PROGRAMME FACTS AND FIGURES

Total investment: £150k

Start and end dates: 01/10/2007 to 31/12/2009

Website: For more information go to www.lec.lancs.ac.uk/cswm/hfp

Contact: Rebecca Whittle r.whittle@lancaster.ac.uk