Although Property Flood Resilience measures have become more widely promoted and accepted, their suitability for managing and mitigating the unique mechanisms and durations of groundwater flooding is poorly understood. 2024 saw Project Groundwater’s Resilience workstream forge ahead to improve insight and learning in this area, led by RAB Consultants, specialists in Resilience and Flood Risk.
2024
Collaboration has been a key theme in 2024. It has helped us to build our understanding about the challenges that communities face, to raise awareness about Property Flood Resilience, and to identify development opportunities.
Building understanding
- In 2024,we spent time walking through seven of the nine project community areas to better understand the local geography, flooding receptors and how they are impacted by groundwater flooding. In some cases, local authority representatives came along and were able to provide clearer insight into the flood history and how groundwater impacts the communities.
- We enjoyed meeting with communities at public events in Pang Valley, Hinksey Park, and Chalfont St. Peter to explain the benefits and limitations of Property Flood Resilience (PFR), and how our work could benefit them.
- In Pang Valley, we helped to showcase the FloodMobile, an interactive demonstration vehicle that shows examples of over 50 practical PFR measures.
- We created a Flood Experience Questionnaire for residents and businesses to gather further details of how they have been impacted by groundwater flooding and how they sought to minimise these impacts. Responses will also be used to identify properties in the project communities that may be suitable for a fully-funded PFR survey. The questionnaire was released to six of the nine community areas, with the final three communities to be consulted in early 2025.
Discussions and ideas
- We featured on Project Groundwater’s ‘Groundwater Rising’ podcast, talking about the unique challenges that groundwater flooding presents, explaining how PFR can help, and acknowledging the limitations of existing PFR measures.
- We welcomed more technical experts into our working groups this year. Focusing on areas at risk of groundwater flooding, they worked with us to identify opportunities for the research and development of innovative flood resilience measures.
- To help us identify and capture insight and common themes, we developed a Groundwater Flooding Case Study Report which will be continually updated as we identify examples of groundwater flooding through our working groups, questionnaire responses and PFR surveys.
Project Groundwater wants to improve insight and learning about Property Flood Resilience
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2025
Winter 2024/5 sees the first public trial of the flood warning service. We will be collecting feedback throughout the trial, which will be used to improve and refine the service. This will include engaging with communities directly through our existing networks and groups.
Building understanding
- We will continue to attend community engagement events when required to help promote the benefits of flood resilience and the work being undertaken through the project.
- We will work with the other technical workstreams to develop an infographic to help communities understand the suitable options for managing groundwater flood risk within their local areas.
On the ground – Property Flood Resilience surveys and recommended measures
- We will continue our community engagement through the Flood Experience Questionnaire. Based on the responses, we will begin to undertake PFR surveys across all nine community areas. The surveys will take place in stages, with completion expected in summer 2025.
- Each property owner will receive a bespoke survey report that will outline their groundwater flood risk using the modelling and mapping developed through the project, along with guidance and recommendations for measures that could be implemented to help increase their flood resilience.
- We will work with the wider project team to continue to develop a package of Community Resilience measures for each community.
- We will continue working towards our aim for producing a Groundwater Flooding Toolkit. The Toolkit will help communities to manage the risks of groundwater flooding. It will also provide guidance to technical specialists on how to improve assessments of properties which are at risk of groundwater flooding.
Discussions and ideas
- We will continue to collaborate with technical specialists and project partners through our working groups. We will record the findings of the groups, along with findings from the Flood Experience Questionnaire in a Gap Analysis Report. The Report will serve as an evidence base for the direction of our research and innovation. From this, we will then explore how we can further develop our findings and ideas, with a view to implementing them in the project communities.
Find out more about Project Groundwater
