On Tuesday, 8 November, the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) held the latest in our series of 21st Century Challenges Policy Forum discussion meetings, on ‘Achieving Sustainable Flood Risk Management in the UK‘. An audience of 100 professionals from a range of different sectors, from business and industry to academia, central and local government to Non-Governmental Organisations, convened at the Society to contribute to discussion with our expert panel of leading geographers and other flooding experts.

Outputs from the event are now available online. On the event webpage you can access a number of the speakers’ presentations. An audio recording of the event will be available shortly, along with video interviews conducted with a selection of our speakers immediately in advance of Tuesday’s meeting. Speakers will outline their views on the fundamental question behind the discussion: how do we manage flood risk sustainably in the UK in the long term?

RGS-IBG Policy Recommendations

Also available online is a set of policy recommendations, published by the RGS-IBG and launched at the Policy Forum event. These recommendations are the Society’s response to the reviews of flooding policy which have been undertaken, and are still being undertaken, by the UK Government in 2015/16. In May 2016 the Society convened a round table meeting bringing together researchers and practitioners representing the breadth of geography – from the physical to the social sciences – and the expertise on flooding present within the geographical community. The wide-ranging recommendations include the need for greater awareness raising amongst the media, parliamentarians and the public with respect to flood risk; the need for a systematic review of the effectiveness of dredging as a flood management tool; greater communication of those at risk of flooding of the concept of ‘residual risk’ and the need for catchment-scale modelling to assess what scale and type of Natural Flood Management can deliver measurable impacts in larger catchments and for more severe, high magnitude/ low frequency flood events. Overall, the recommendations demonstrate the importance of taking a holistic and wide-ranging, geographical, view of flooding and the need to reflect this in governance.