Property Level Resilience: Belsize Flood Resilience Project and Southampton Pathfinder Project
Belsize Flood Resilience Project
The Belsize Flood Resilience Project started in 2013 and aimed at reducing the flood risk to the properties at highest risk from flooding in the St Deny’s area.
The scheme came from the Southampton Coastal Flood and Erosion Risk Management Strategy (2012) which proposed that property level flood resistance and resilience and community adaptation measures were implemented for the highest risk properties between 2030 and 2060.
The objective of the Belsize Flood Resilience Project was to improve household and community flood resilience using a combined approach to managing all sources of flood risk.
The project enabled close working with the community at significant flood risk in St Denys, to further understand the flood risk interactions in the local area, assess and implement the most appropriate combination of measures to reduce the risk to individual households and empower residents to implement their own local community response to future flood events. The main achievements of the project are:
- Reduced flood risk to 46 individual households in the target area (an increase on the original 39 targeted properties)
- Direct engagement with residents throughout the project to increase awareness, acceptance and ownership of the flooding issue
- Developed community resilience through establishment of a local flood action group who produced a local community flood plan
For more information on the scheme and the Community Flood Group please visit ItchenTides – Community Tide News webpage.
Southampton Pathfinder Project
The Flood Resilience Community Pathfinder scheme was intended to enable and stimulate communities at significant or greater risk of flooding to work with key partners to develop innovative local solutions that:
- Enhance flood risk management and awareness in ways which quantifiably improve the community’s overall resilience to flooding
- Demonstrably improve the community’s financial resilience in relation to flooding
- Deliver sustained improvements which have the potential to be applied in other areas
The scheme operated between 2013 and 2015 nationally and Southampton was one of the 13 cities to receive funding to take part in a demonstration pilot, whose outputs and outcomes will help us better understand the contribution that actions by individuals and communities can make to better manage their flood risk.
