Implications for Flood Risk Management Foresight
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Climate Risk Management 32 (2021) 100317 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Climate Risk Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/crm Contemporary flood risk perceptions in England: Implications for flood risk management foresight Henry Ngenyam Bang *, Nicholas Church Burton Disaster Management Centre, Bournemouth University, Dorset, Talbot Campus, Fern Barrow, BH12 5BB Poole, UK ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Keywords: Although England has been experiencing major floodsdating back thousands of years, the hazard Flooding is increasing in frequency and intensity, exacerbated by climate risks with potentially serious Climate change consequences. Despite attempts to mitigate climate risks (manifested via recurrent flooding) in Flood risk perception line with international disaster risk reduction agendas, the impacts/effects of floods continue to Flood risk management increase in England. This is partly due to negligence in inculcating contemporary flood risk Climate risk management England perceptions (FRP) into climate risk management (CRM) strategies. This research aims to inves tigate contemporary FRM in England through a qualitative case study approach in Wainfleet All Saints in Lincolnshire County that experienced unprecedented floods in June 2019. Empirical investigation was conducted with the flood-affected community members and flood managers with oversight of CRM in the region. Key findings reveal the June 2019 floods had both tangible and intangible impacts for the affected community with dreadful effects. Challenges to CRM revealed issues around limited funding; climate changes’ potential to increase flood risk and low community perception of their own risks reflected in poor/none-preparedness for contemporary floods.The multi-agency response to the June 2019 floodswas found to be positive, albeit with a few concerns. Based on the analysis of the findings, a series of policy recommendations are proffered with the aim to spur organisational/institutional resilience to CRM. This article un derscores the relevance to continuously include contemporary FRP into CRM strategies especially to enhance community participation and involvement in mitigating their own risks. 1. Introduction The frequency and intensity of floodhazards continue to rise worldwide, are lasting longer and becoming more unpredictable and damaging (Ozger, 2017; Wing et al., 2018), exacerbated by Climate Change (CC) and development/infrastructural projects in enor mous risk areas (Denchak, 2019; ASC, 2014). Floods have been the main natural hazards in Europe for more than a century. According to the European Environment Agency (EEA) (2018), between 1870 and 2016, 1,564 major flood hazardous events have occurred in Europe, dominated by flash floods. To mitigate climate risks, nation states have been implementing international disaster risk reduction agendas (UNISDR, 2015) albeit with limitations partly because public flood risk perception (FRP) have not been sufficiently considered in climate risk man agement (CRM) measures (Sayers et al., 2018). Understanding public FRP, therefore, underpins enhanced flood resilience and suc cessful CRM strategies (Terpstra and Lindell, 2012) because the social and economic contexts in which disaster risks occur shape * Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (H. Ngenyam Bang). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crm.2021.100317 Received 21 February 2020; Received in revised form 30 March 2021; Accepted 27 April 2021 Available online 8 May 2021 2212-0963/© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). H. Ngenyam Bang and N. Church Burton Climate Risk Management 32 (2021) 100317 perceptions of risk and the underlying risk factors (UNISDR, 2017). This necessitates a strategic approach to CRM by engaging risk reduction practices that target the most vulnerable communities (Sayers et al., 2018). Contemporary characterisation of flood vulnerability in this article is based on the Neighbourhood Flood Vulnerability Index- —features of a neighbourhood that determines its potential to experience a depletion of well-being when exposed to floodingand over which flood management policy has minimal or no control (Lindley et al. 2011). The Neighbourhood Flood Vulnerability Index re- quires consideration of fivecharacteristics: susceptibility to flooding,which is influencedby age and health; the ability to prepare for, respond to, and recover from flooding, which are dependent on income, information use, local knowledge, property tenue, physical mobility, and crime; and community support, which is influenced by housing characteristics, direct flood experience, service avail- ability and social networks (Lindley et al., 2011; Sayers et al., 2018). Vulnerable floodcommunities in England are the central focus of this research. Knowledge of FRP in England is vital because floodrisk vary in the different River Basin Districts since they have various levels of development, are of varied sizes and are vulnerable to diverse types of flooding (EA, 2018). Interestingly, many flood-prone com- munities are not aware of the climate risks they face (Lady and Kondolf, 2012) and there is insufficientanalysis on the risks they can bear or accept, nor their shared responsibilities in mitigating these risks (Kundzewicz et al., 2018). This research, therefore, aims to better comprehend contemporary climate risk in England through a case study approach in East Lindsey District of Lincolnshire County that was severely floodedin June 2019 and required that three main objectives be addressed: (1) To gauge how the affected household/community perceive climate risks (2) To evaluate how perceptions of climate risk might influence their individual attitudes towards an adaptive behaviour in flood risk management (FRM) and (3) To investigate whether professionals within the public administration are incorporating climate risk in their management approaches. This study contributes to fill the knowledge gap that exists between vulnerable flood-prone communities who mostly rely on experiential knowledge to understand, anticipate, and manage flood risks and administrators whose CRM decisions are influenced mostly by scientificinformation. The analysis seeks to comprehend both the public and stakeholder FRP to examine any convergence and the potential implications for FRM. This article has 7 sections: after the introduction, Section 2 provides theoretical underpinnings relevant to the article followed by a brief review of floodrisk in England in Section 3. The methodology section is next in Section 4, followed by the research findingsin Section 5 while Section 6 focuses on discussion. The last section (7) concludes the article and makes suggestions/recommendations. 2. Brief review of theoretical underpinnings In this article, risk is viewed through the lens of CRM as a combination of hazards, and potential ramificationsthat are contingent upon a system’s vulnerability (influencedby exposure, resilience, and susceptibility) to floodingand FRM objectives can be achieved by altering the risk variables/factors (Balica et al., 2013). Since risk perception studies focus on the relationship between how in- dividuals perceive risk and how they respond to that risk (Slovic, 2000), they provide invaluable insights, in the context of this research, on the appropriate risk reduction and/or adaptation measures to climate risks. Risk perception is conceptualised in diverse ways: as the intuitive judgement of groups and individuals of risks, in circumstances of limited, unknown and/or uncertain information; the subjective assessment of the probability of a specifictype of accident occurring and how worried people are with the consequences and the ability to ascertain the amount of risk from a hazard (Slovic, 2000; Inouye, 2014). A variety of psychological, social, institutional, and cultural factors influence the risk perception of individuals, groups, or communities (Slovic, 2000; Lin et al., 2008). Factors such as the past experiences of individuals or communities to natural hazards, knowledge, attitudes, emotions, and values, influence people’s thinking and judgment on risk acceptability and seriousness (Lindell and Perry, 2012). Risk can also be perceived through the relationship of risk characteristics such as worry, awareness and pre- paredness, or as the combined perceived probability, consequences, likelihood and/or severity of a certain occurrence, event, happening, incident, or activity (Lazrus et al., 2016; Birkholz et al., 2014). In addition, risk perception may vary depending on the individual’s personality, social context, and risk type/context (Wachinger et al., 2013; Kellens et al., 2013). Correlational evidence supports the association between risk perception and people’s response attitudes/behaviors to risks. Indeed, the underlying premise for the attitude (decisions, actions, behavior) of people regarding natural hazards/disasters are shaped by individual/collective perceptions of risk (Bourque et al., 2012; Terpstra and Lindell, 2012). Perceptions enable the evaluation of hazardous situations, which subsequently influencesbehavior like motivating individuals to take action to mitigate, avoid, adapt to, or even ignore risks (Slovic, 2000; Wachinger et al., 2013). There is a higher likelihood that individuals and communities who have experienced hazards/disaster and perceive themselves to be vulnerable to climate risks