Factors affecting UK flood resilience in community spaces: reflections on past, present and future

RUSI Annual Conference –14th November 2014

Professor Lindsey McEwen Centre for Floods, Communities and Resilience

University of the West of England, Bristol

(Lindsey.McEwen@uwe.ac.uk) www.uwe.ac.uk/research/cfcr

Presentation structure

• Intersecting dynamics to ‘community resilience’

• Past, present and future factors influencing

community resilience (enablers and inhibitors)

Drawing on: interdisciplinary ESRC Sustainable

Flood Memories Project (February 2011-November Flood Memories Project (February 2011-November

2013; Knowledge Exchange, August 2013-February 2015)

Sharing ‘voices’ from different flood risk settings

Team: Professor Lindsey McEwen (flood histories; FRM; flood

education); Dr Joanne Garde-Hansen (media and memory);

Professor Owain Jones (cultural geography); Dr Andrew

Holmes (oral history); Dr Franz Krause (social anthropology)

Range of intersecting dynamics to

‘community resilience’

• Flood extremes (‘flood rich’ period) and changing floods

(different types; both climate change and development)

• Contested notions of ‘community’

• Changing governance (shift to ‘the local’) and distributed • Changing governance (shift to ‘the local’) and distributed

flood risk management

– ‘Big Society’ and the Localism Act (2011) – ‘new rights and powers for

communities and individuals’

– Distributed Flood Risk Management – devolved responsibility

– Flood risk subsidiarity where central government performs only those

tasks which cannot be performed at a more local level.

– Austerity agenda of reduced central budgets

Conceptual

framework

- relationship

between

capital

domains and

community

4

community

disaster

resilience

(Mayunga,

2007)

‘Community’ as a contested term

• People felt part of a local community most intensely when

‘three aspects [of community], the social, spatial and

mental, were understood to be present [simultaneously].

That is, there was an attachment or sense of belonging to

the locality; residents felt a shared, place-based identity

and dense localised networks existed within the

community boundaries’ (Coates, 2010, p198). community boundaries’ (Coates, 2010, p198).

• External versus internal perceptions of ‘community’ and

‘hard to reach’

• Impacts of traditional and social media for networking and

knowledge-sharing

• Frequently ‘communities’ rather than ‘community’

• Focus on positive community action and

its future potential

‘ES.108 In a wide area emergency,

authorities are overwhelmed and people

have little choice other than to help

themselves.’ (Cabinet Office, 2008, p34)

• Move to ‘community lead adaptation

UK policy post 2007 floods: Shift to ‘local’

• Move to ‘community lead adaptation

planning’ for resilience; distributed

responsibilities for dealing with ‘residual

flood risk’

• Less consideration of implications

paradigm shift (‘flood defence’ to ‘flood risk

management’) for community

awareness/understanding/action?

Positioning of community(cf. Riley et al., 2007 for USA)

Where we are now?: ‘The government will protect us

(from flooding)’

Involves both reducing the risk

A paradigm of flood defence where engineering solutions reign supreme

Where we need to be?: ‘We are all responsible for our safety (from flooding)’

reducing the risk of flooding AND the consequences of flooding should this occur for ALL community members

Requires new paradigm of joint Requires new paradigm of joint Requires new paradigm of joint Requires new paradigm of joint partnerships in a comprehensive partnerships in a comprehensive partnerships in a comprehensive partnerships in a comprehensive

approach combining flood risk approach combining flood risk approach combining flood risk approach combining flood risk management with flood educationmanagement with flood educationmanagement with flood educationmanagement with flood education

Community resilience –historical frames

Postcard acknowledgement : Sue Norman

Exploring historical flood

resilience

21st March 1947 –Tewkesbury and

Gloucester

• Resilient way traditional houses built (slab floors/ lime plaster)

• Fewer high cost belongings at risk (e.g. ‘white goods’)

• Culture of salvage/ reuse rather than replacement

• Empowerment to act to rescue family/ neighbours (e.g. boats)

(Sources: Gloucestershire Echo;

Swift’s Severn floods) family/ neighbours (e.g. boats)Swift’s Severn floods)

Community resilience –present frames Photograph

acknowledgement: William

Morris

Human impacts of July 2007

floods, UK: direct and indirect costs

• Severn/ Sheffield/ Hull

• 12 people lost lives

• 48,000 houses + 7,000

businesses flooded

• Community disruption• Community disruption

– Loss of business– Some residents in

caravans for > 1 year

• 350,000 consumers in

Gloucestershire without water

supplies in late July

• Termed “the most severe UK

peacetime crisis” (Pitt Review)

Water Treatment Plant, Tewkesbury -

flooded

Copyright: Getty

Images

‘Sustainable flood memory’ as form of community capital

Exploring links between (collective) memory of extreme floods and lay/local flood knowledge (as community capital):– community focused

– archival access and dissemination– archival access and dissemination

– integrating individual/personal and collective experiences

• involving inter- (vertical) and intra-generational (horizontal) communication

– strategies for capturing and protecting memory

– strategies for dealing with future flood risk

Active forgetting

What are the implications for community capital - post-flood community capital - post-flood

learning, adaptation and community resilience,

particularly when these are key players in communities?

Active forgetting: emotion

Some people prefer not to remember the floods because they associate them with painful/ traumatic memories.

‘I think you've got to actually try and forget them cos they were terrifying. And if you try… If you think too much about it then you… I mean, obviously for two or much about it then you… I mean, obviously for two or three years after those floods every bit of rain, every bit of flooding terrified some people, absolutely terrified them. They thought that this was all going to happen again.’

(female, 76, area affected in 2007 without prior flood experience)

Active forgetting:

‘levee effect’

What message is conveyed with flood alleviation works? ‘It

will never happen again’ or ‘this is a flood risk area’?

‘And then after that in the 1970s we put up the new ‘And then after that in the 1970s we put up the new defences and it was working extremely well. People got more confident and the Council said okay, and some of the semi-derelict houses were bought and completely rebuilt and that sort of thing. So we were quite confident really.’

(male, 75, rural village setting)

Active

forgetting: to

ignore flood risk

– Forgetting floods to ignore flood risk? (e.g.

property value, insurance, developer’s plans)

– Some communities prefer to forget (marks – Some communities prefer to forget (marks removed; economic concerns - ‘back in business’)

‘So I suppose we do our bit here, but I don't think the

councils do enough to… You've got to go and interview

them… I don't think they do enough to remember do they? They want to choose to forget…’

(male, 34, town with regular floods)

Active forgetting: referral

Referral of responsibility for flooding and flood risk

management?

‘I think they shouldn't dwell too much on it. Okay, as I

say, many people have done something about developing

their houses better. But I just don't think they should dwell

on it. Otherwise it's going to make life a misery. Quite

honestly. Leave it to the authorities to try and be alert and aware of the possibility of a flood’.

(female, 76, area affected in 2007 without prior flood

experience)

Active forgetting: flood fatigue

‘I am not sure how I can help, except to put you in touch

with the same people again and they have now moved on. So has the City of course. The [2012] high waters in the City did not cause the problems of 2007; the City

was kept 'dry' due to the various flood protection initiatives was kept 'dry' due to the various flood protection initiatives

taken by the water companies and Environment Agency

since 2007 - this has put the floods into even more distant memory.’

(male, 65, city affected by regular flooding)

Active remembering

What are the implications for

community capital - post-community capital - post-flood learning, adaptation and community resilience- particularly when these are

key players in communities?

Community flood archives post 2007

‘what is no longer archived in the same way is no longer lived in the same way’ (Derrida 1996,

p18)River Severn flood mark, porch to

Abbey, UK

Active environmental remembering:the lived experience of flood memory as anecdotal lay

knowledge

‘And then the Sunday morning, I got

up early and I could see the water was going to come in because at

Gloucester Lock, there's

measurements and if it's 23-feet measurements and if it's 23-feet

which the normal river level is about

10'. At 23 feet, it's going to come in the house.’

(female, 79, area of city with high %

of transient residents)

Active remembering: as

catalyst for local action

‘In my day, 40 years ago, we wanted to improve the flood banks

then, and we had a sub-committee within the village that

increased the height of the banks, with completely our own increased the height of the banks, with completely our own

efforts really. […..] After the 2007 flood it was realised by the

village that the flood defences wanted making much higher and

stronger. So this sub-committee was formed of five of us I think, and we then started making plans to get grants.’

(male, 75 years, cohesive rural setting)

Active remembering: taking

responsibility

‘The Environment Agency want to take over the responsibility and we resisted that very vigorouslyreally because we know when they [the flood gates] want

closing …..And also the EA, once the floods do come they closing …..And also the EA, once the floods do come they

are so busy upstream getting various gates and things shut

that I think it wouldn’t be a very reliable situation so we’ve made it plain that we want responsibility to shut it.’

(male, 75, cohesive rural setting)

Future resilience? – key questions

for community spaces

• What knowledge bases can we draw on in ‘learning for resilience’/ developing community capital?

− Learning from rural settings to urban?

− Learning from historic and present settings to future?

− Learning from (repeat) flood experiences within and between resilient and

less-resilient communities?

− How to archive and share flood memories and lay knowledge?

− How to integrate flood knowledges (expert/lay) in local risk governance in

non-conflictual ways? (cf. McEwen and Jones, 2012)

• How can ‘active remembering’ best be linked to preparedness?

• Which factors (e.g. ‘shared flood experience’) encourage community cohesion, or allow tensions/ conflicts to grow?

• What are relationships between resilience building in local and global communities (potential role of social media)?

Shift to ‘local’: strengths and opportunities…• Enhanced citizenship? (flood cf. Nye et al., 2011);

‘towards hydrocitizenship’; AHRC project)

– Willingness to volunteer (e.g. as flood wardens; involvement in flood groups; tends to be older groups ‘silver service’ – with more time)

– Community involvement in Sustainable Urban Drainage (SUDS) schemes for local (holistic) surface water management

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