Building a flood resilient culture: Turning awareness into action

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Building a flood resilient culture Turning
awareness into action

• Liz Cook
• Environment Agency
• England Wales

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Overview

• Awareness and Action
• Campaign Positioning - Social Engineering
• Informing the Process - Research Evaluation
• Barriers and Solutions

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Awareness and Action
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1999 Research The Public View

• People living in flood risk areas do not
  understand what to do before, during or after a
  flood
• Flooding not taken seriously as an issue
• Multi-agency approach can appear confusing
• No natural link between the Agency and flooding
• Flood Warning Codes not understood

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Communications Brief

• To raise awareness among people who live, work or
  travel in flood risk areas
• Keep flooding in the national consciousness
• To encourage people to take a more pro-active
  approach to protecting themselves
• To explain what the Agency can/cannot do
• To improve public perception of the Agency

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Communications Journey
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Public Awareness - Key themes
1999 - Flooding is serious 2000 - Flooding
relates to me 2001 - There are things I can
do 2002 - Be prepared for flooding
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Changing attitudes and behaviours
Communications
Demonstration
ATTITUDE
BEHAVIOUR
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Awareness to action
JOLT NATIONALLY Television PR
MAKE LOCALLY RELEVANT AND ACTIONABLE Press
advertising and editorial, Local campaign plan
SUPPORT Direct Mail Flood Guides

This is relevant to me
This is an important issue
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Campaign Positioning - Social Engineering
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Flood Warning Service Performance Targets

• To extend coverage of the flood warning service
• To issue timely flood warnings (at least 2 hours
  notice to allow people to take action)
• To enable people to take effective action to
  mitigate against damage, stress etc

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Flood Warning Performance Targets
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Informing the Process - Research Evaluation
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Measuring our service
At Risk - awareness of risk, steps to prepare
for flooding and suggestions for improvements to
the service Post Event - reports on the
effectiveness of the service following a flood
event (did people receive and understand the
warning, did they take action to limit damage,
etc)
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Campaign effectiveness

• Awareness of the Agency and its flooding role-
• 1997 - 48
• 1998 - 58
• 1999 - 72
• 2000 - 69
• 2001 - 85
• 2002 79
• Source BMRB, Annual Awareness Survey (Omnibus)

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Attitudes to flooding
3
95
Flooding is a serious issue
45
45
Flooding is an issue which affects me
10
78
There are things I can do to prepare for flooding
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57
I will take action to reduce the impact of
flooding
18
55
There are organisations offering help and support
Agree
Disagree
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Barriers Solutions
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Cultural Barriers 1998

• Flooding seen as a one off
• Technical solutions seen to be able to control
  flooding
• Flood Awareness seen from an engineering
  perspective
• 1998 Floods demonstrated need for focus on
  consumers, not technology

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Cultural Barriers - 2002

• Reluctance to accept flood risk may happen to
  individuals on a personal level
• Concern over availability of insurance
• Concern over property blight
• Desire for better risk information

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Flood Protection the future
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Community Involvement
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Flood protection hierarcy

• 1. Permanent community defences or adequate
  urban drainage
• 2. Temporary barriers to hold the floodwater from
  a group of houses
• 3. Individual barriers (flood gates, boards,
  covers)

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