The deadline is approaching for submissions to the Call for Evidence under the National Flood Resilience Review launched by the government following Storm Desmond last December.

The Review, which is chaired by Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Oliver Letwin, is charged with assessing how the country can be better protected from future flooding and increasingly extreme weather events.

The Review is focussing on four key areas:

• updating climate modelling and stress-testing the nation’s resilience to flood risk;
• assessing the resilience of critical infrastructure like electricity substations;
• temporary defences;
• and future investment strategy.

The call for evidence is specifically focused on the need to carry out a new assessment of the damage that extreme rainfall could cause across England. This will focus on the impacts on populated areas including urban areas and crucial elements of infrastructure such as significant roads, bridges, energy infrastructure, water treatment plants, telecoms and hospitals.

The aim is to gain an understanding of the possible implications of extreme events and to review current modelling assumptions.

The call is for evidence which has been published in a peer-reviewed journal or evidence that has been published elsewhere following an independent review process, is available now and can be submitted by the deadline, rather than a call for views.

Respondents are being asked to provide a summary of the content and an explanation of how the evidence relates to the review questions for each piece of evidence submitted via an online evidence survey. Specific areas where the review is asking for published  evidence include:

• future flood risk / rainfall extremes in England
• how best to communicate risk and uncertainty to the public before and during a flood event
• other countries’ approach to floods resilience policy
• international approaches to improving flood resilience for communities and infrastructure
• evidence (from infrastructure operators in particular) on the current and planned use of temporary measures to improve resilience of infrastructure.

The Review team includes the Government’s Chief Scientist, Defra, DECC, DCLG, HM Treasury and the Chief Executive of the Environment Agency.

With the evidence and analysis in hand, the government will then turn to considering the longer term strategy on flood risk alleviation. This will look at temporary and flexible responses as well as hard flood defences beyond the current six-year programme. It will also include the balance between protection and resilience, an assessment of risk in England’s core cities and examine the role of both government and wider society in reducing flood risk.

The Review is set to be published this summer. Deadline for submissions of evidence is 4^th March - click here to access the evidence survey online.

Waterbriefing is media partner with the major Environment Agency Flood and Coast 2016 conference and exhibition in Telford from 23rd-25th February 2016. Click here for more information.