By Lindsay McEwan, University of the West of England
Increasingly managing floods is not only about designing engineering measures but also about developing integrated place-based approaches to managing flood risk that involve working with local community and voluntary groups. Measures to deal with risk range in scale from nature-based solutions to flooding in river catchments and in cities, to flood warning, flood insurance and individual property level protection. All need understanding of the interactions of communities and hydrological and technical processes to be effective. Indeed, community-based flood risk management needs to have communities and concern for local inequalities at its core - working with individual citizens and increasingly community action groups and NGOs alongside organisations with statutory flood risk management responsibilities.
Geographers explore how human and physical processes overlay, interact and change in space and time. Both floods and communities are becoming more complex with climate change and urban development. Causes of flooding in the UK are diverse and increasingly compound, including rivers - large and small, tides and storm surges, alongside increased surface water flooding off urban surfaces. Social vulnerability and inequalities in impacts are also increasing and vary over space and time in flood risk settings. Time is an important element – with the main focus in flood risk management shifting from ‘the event’ to understanding the whole flood risk management cycle (including recovery and preparation) and where interventions might be made to increase community resilience.
Geographers have traditionally paid strong attention to how they communicate with different groups in the places they study. The number of stakeholders involved in local flood risk management has grown - with NGOs like the National Flood Forum, Groundwork and others increasingly supporting communities, building capacities and sharing best practices in local resilience building. Geographers are well-placed to contribute to such place-based dialogue.
Here, I draw on my own work with at-risk communities in a variety of settings, particularly in towns along the lower River Severn valley, southwest UK, like Tewkesbury and Gloucester.
Co-working with communities in research and practice in flood risk management requires strong attention to building of trust and positive relationships, in what is often a stressful and tensioned space. I have found that participatory methods in research involving repeat engagements and dialogue can be particularly valuable. I have also coproduced research on flood experiences and adaptation with communities and other local stakeholders. Meaningful coproduction involves early discussion between academics (geographers and other disciplines), communities and other stakeholders about defining the research questions about floods and communities, and how to approach their investigation in particular places.
I have found issues in working with at-risk communities include those of fatigue from being ‘over researched’ by students and academics from universities. There can also be tensions between active remembering and active forgetting about floods in communities that have been previously affected by floods. For example, some affected residents form flood action groups while others actively try to forget for various reasons such as worry/trauma or in getting back to ‘business as usual’.
The timeline is important in any study of floods and communities. In communities that have not been affected by flooding recently and lack inter-generational flood memory, there may also be a lack of willingness to engage. This may be due to lack of connection with flood risk as an issue. There are also communities that have more recently become exposed to flooding due to urban development and climate change.
My key recommendations for those undertaking this kind of work would be:
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Be familiar with a range of methods for data gathering in research. Participatory methods have high value - particularly when delivered over more than one session - to building trust and relationships.
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Co-working with arts and humanities brings new opportunities to gather local stories of flood experiences and adaptive practices that are strongly tied to place. This process can be invaluable for both communities and those geographers studying risk and resilience.
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Research experiences of both recovery and preparation in finding out the challenges and opportunities for building community resilience of all members of communities Historically research in flooding has focused just on speaking to people during and after extreme events.
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Timing and the approach to working with communities is essential. This involves concern for ethics in approaching people who have been recently flooded, methods of data gathering that also build trust, and the positioning of any study in relation to actual floods, recovery and preparation.
How to cite
McEwan, L. (2023) Flooding and communities. Working with voluntary and community groups. Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) Guide. Available at: https://doi.org/10.55203/TSXS2714
About this guide
Working with voluntary and community organisations for some is a very important way to do geography. These organisation come in various shapes and sizes and may also often be referred to as the third sector, the voluntary sector, not-for-profit organisations, community groups or the civic sector. In this guide, we share the experiences of researchers doing geography in collaboration with community and voluntary organisations. A range of topics and issues are explored from health, disability and care, through to austerity, violence, and craft, amongst others. We learn about the approaches taken by geographers in their work with community and voluntary organisations, and some of the challenges they have negotiated in the process.