Tim Godson – DCLG Resilience Team

INTRODUCTION PART 1. WHAT DID WE LEARN FROM OUR

DIGITAL DISCOVERY DAY IN BRISTOL:

Reminder on the Legislative Drivers and Local Roles

Prevention

• Acting as planning authorities and using flood risk data to ensure flood resilient development (Planning Legislation)

• Acting as Lead Local Flood and other flood management authorities to produce strategies and plans to prevent flooding (Flood and Water Management Act) – local authority lead on ordinary water courses, coastal defences, surface water and ground water

• Acting as Highways Authorities – maintaining drains(Transport Legislation)

Response

• Planning for flood emergencies relevant to your (local resilience forum) area (Civil Contingencies Act)

• Responding to flood emergencies working with multi-agency partners

• Warning and informing the public during events

• Rapidly providing the best information possible on what’s happening to Defra – your own local strategic leaders will also need this

Recovery

• Helping your communities – people and businesses to get life back to normal

• Let DCLG know how this is going and how any funding provided is being utilised

• This is a long haul and can be long term impacts on people and businesses

• Investigating how things went – to refine plans and prevention work

The Discovery Day Theme - What could good look like – and

how can we best harness technology?

Tim Godson, DCLG – but speaking on behalf of Defra and others

Local working - you know what works on

your patch

• but how can we all work together, floods don’t respect boundaries

• Why invent a system when your neighbours got a good one you can borrow?

• Can your system speak to national ones?• Common platforms rolling out – how can we all make

use of them?

WHAT DID WE FIND ON THE DAY?

• Some fantastic work going on by individual agencies and bodies at the local level

• Good use of digital technology to warn the public, work to prevent flood events, gather during and after events and help recovery

• Some sharing in parts of the country – but could be improved, not everyone aware of the good work going on in other agencies

• Solutions addressed specific issues not many that looked across aspects

• In the resilience community a general move to use Resilience Direct to gather and share information

• Call at the start of the day – keep the people at the centre – how can we work with them to help themselves to protect themselves and be safe

• Call at the end of the day – how can we join up better and identify key solutions we can support use of more widely?

• Why the Steering Group was set up and what we hope to get out of today

Introduction (Part 2):

Taking forward the Digital Discovery Day Outputs

Susanna May Floods Programme Deputy Director

Digital Improvement Steering Group

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The group aims to:

• Join together national and local stakeholders

• Provide co-ordination and support

• Maintain momentum for change

• Share good practice

• Avoid duplication of effort

• Support ‘horizon scanning’

Steering Group Governance

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• Light touch

• Co-chaired by Defra and DCLG

• Quarterly meetings

• Projects organised under four workstream themes

• provide momentum, but individual projects retain own independent project management

• ‘virtual’ groups using online collaborative working environments

The Themes

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• Improving risk assessment

• Making best use of data in flood risk planning (land use planning, flood risk management planning, live updates for strategic development, crowdsourcing)

• Building and improving flood defences

• Works to reduce incidence of flood events

• Land drainage activity

• Improving flow of data during an emergency

• Better reporting of flooding impacts (and potential impacts) at local/national level

• Improving information on availability/co-ordination of key flood response assets

• Warning and informing public

• Warning and informing partners

• Digital support for community resilience

• Post-incident investigations

• Ensuring impact data allows follow up

• Supporting those targeting support to those impacted

• Moving from recovery into resilience, using impact data to refine future risk

Today’s Workshop Objectives

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• Explore further how digital tools can support flood management

• Identify how current digital work fits within the themes

• Understand linkages between current digital work

• Consider how new digital work could enhance capability

• Join together national and local views

• Begin to build communities under each theme

Today’s Workshop Agenda

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• Detailed agendas on your seats

• Four key tasks:

• Activity 1: Mapping themes to existing and potential projects

• Activity 2: Ways of working using collaborative tools

• Tea/Coffee break

• Activity 3: Defining next steps for the workstreams

• Activity 4: Looking ahead

Before we begin…

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• Any questions?

Activity 1

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• There are four flipcharts – one for each theme: Prevention; Preparedness; Response and Recovery

• Move to the flipchart theme most relevant to you/most interests you initially (we will move round later) (45 mins)

• Map existing digital projects we are aware of that fit under the theme• Identify current issues/gaps that new projects may solve for the theme• Identify possible theme members• Identify any related initiatives that it is useful to be aware of

• Rotate to the next flipchart theme that interests you the most and review the earlier group’s contributions (15 mins)

• Feedback (10 mins)

Activity 3

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• Move to the flipchart theme most relevant (35 mins)

• Consider what digital ways of working mean for the theme - what do

we like, and what would suit us?

• Identify top priority projects

• Choose one example from each theme and identify next

steps/actions

• Each theme to feedback to wider group (10 mins)