Improving property flood resilience across the south-west
A unique multi-partner collaboration working across the south-west of England to help individuals, businesses and communities gain greater awareness of flood risk and the importance of property flood resilience.
This award-winning, multi-disciplinary project produced an initial baseline survey allowing us to create multiple resources for raising awareness and providing guidance to those living in the south-west of England about property flood resilience.
- Client Cornwall Council, Environment Agency and DEFRA
- Location Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly
- Services
Creating resources to help communities and businesses across the south-west gain greater awareness of flood risk and property flood resilience
We support our clients to be aware, adapt, respond to and recover from the increased risks posed by a changing climate. When it comes to flood risk, we help identify the steps that home owners, business owners and communities can take to reduce the risk of damage from flooding. These are known as property flood resilience (PFR) measures.
The South West Property Flood Resilience (PFR) project aimed to help individuals, businesses and communities across the south-west gain greater awareness of flood risk and the importance of PFR. To achieve this aim we carried out a baseline study which established where PFR schemes have already been provided across the region and identified any barriers to the uptake of PFR.
We collected information from the Environment Agency and the five Lead Local Flood Authorities: Cornwall Council, Devon County Council, Torbay Council, Plymouth City Council and the the Council of the Isles of Scilly.
The study identified that 35 resistance-focused PFR schemes have already been completed across the region, providing PFR measures to approximately 700 properties over the last decade.
The study also helped to identify a number of barriers to the uptake and delivery of PFR, which in turn helped form the strategy for the next two phases of the project.
The South West Property Flood Resilience Pathfinder project won the Climate Resilient Places award at the 2022 Flood and Coast Excellence Awards, including the Aardman Animations ground-breaking short film BeFloodReady - Missy's Tale.
How did we raise awareness of property flood resilience?
We worked closely with the pathfinder team to develop a wide range of resources, to raise awareness and provide information for those living and working with flood risk. We contributed to a PFR information booklet and the creation of the BeFloodReady website and social media channels. We also worked on a series of 13 animated PFR videos, each focusing on one type of PFR measure and demonstrating how each product type can help reduce water ingress.
Community engagement
We created a purpose-designed exhibition trailer called the FloodPod with a planned awareness-raising tour, which was limited due to COVID-19 restrictions. We helped to set up the South–West Climate Change Centre at the Heartlands Heritage site, and we also ran virtual PFR workshops with communities and businesses across the south–west.
We commissioned and helped launch the ground-breaking film BeFloodReady – Missy’s Tale from award winning Aardman Animations, designed to raise awareness of PFR across a much wider audience across the south-west and far beyond.’
Services
Delivering transformative technology that is pioneering in the pursuit of flood, water and environmental resilience.
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Developing leading resilience strategies and solutions founded on the integrated modelling and assessment of water quantity, quality and environmental processes.
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Working within a robust and mature digital delivery environment, our engineering specialists work closely with our modelling, hydrology and environmental teams to ensure designs are developed to create efficient, low-carbon and sustainable solutions.
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Our specialists in landscape, heritage, ecology, fisheries, EIA, planning and sustainability all work collaboratively with our engineering designers, modellers and our project managers to develop resilient places.
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Our proven skills and experience make us a natural partner to help support communities and organisations to become more resilient. We support and empower our clients to manage the twin risks of flood and drought, encouraging and delivering effective water management.
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Working with communities across the world to identify and mitigate flood and environmental risks, support sustainable development and build resilience.
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