Scotland’s Flood Resilience Conference Highlights Urgent Need for Action and Innovation | CREW | Scotland's Centre of Expertise for Waters

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30th December 2025

Hydrological Extremes, Coasts and Risk Management

CREW stand with three staff at conference

The 2025 Sniffer (now Verture ) Flood Resilience Conference brought together experts, policymakers, and communities at Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh to tackle the pressing challenges of flood resilience.

Dr Alasdair Allan, Acting Minister for Climate Action, launched Scotland’s National Flood Resilience Strategy, emphasising the importance of proactive flood management and how Scotland takes flooding seriously. One of CREWs recent science policy fellowships (Building Public Health Resilience to Fluvial Flooding in Scotland) features in the strategy and you can read more about that here.

The conference also amplified young voices from local schools, highlighting the next generation’s concerns and aspirations for climate resilience, and gave a platform to early career researchers from SEPA, AECOM, RPALtd, University of Dundee and Mott MacDonald.

Key sessions explored innovative flood solutions, sustainable drainage systems, and nature-based approaches. Please follow the links for more information about our recently published SuDS (sustainable drainage systems) project, ‘Increasing flood resilience: residential and community runoff retention solutions’ and our science-policy fellowship ‘Resilience to Fluvial Flooding: Knowns and Unknowns to Recommendations for Management’ which touched on the theme of natural flood management.

One of the most impactful talks came from members of the Glasgow Disability Alliance who spoke about involving disabled people in flood resilience, giving examples of how critical it is for disabled peoples voices to be included in emergency response planning. The CREW science-policy fellowship ‘Policy to Preparedness: Flood Policy and Community Engagement’ broaches inequalities in society. The research team finding that distribution of physical flood risk is not fair nor equal, nor are the social circumstances of many who live on low incomes with limited resources.

The event underscored the need for co-produced, community-led solutions. As Sniffer’s new CEO, Jo Kerr, noted, “We need to meaningfully and deeply co-produce solutions.” With Scotland facing increasing flood risks, these conversations will shape future strategies for resilience and adaptation.

On a final note, we would like to thank Diarmuid O'Neill, Director of Environment and Forestry for Scottish Government for mentioning the work done by CREW in his plenary address, and to also thank all of the people who came to talk to us at the CREW stand.