Flooding & Coastal Erosion

Many areas of Great Britain were badly affected by flooding over a fourteen-week period in the winter of 2015/2016. The flooding had considerable impacts on numerous communities, including private homes, business premises, transport infrastructure and agricultural land. In Scotland, in early December 2015, severe flooding affected the south of the country with Hawick and Dumfries both badly affected. Late December saw further periods of heavy rainfall that brought more flooding to the South of Scotland, badly affecting Peebles and Newton Stewart.

Many areas of Great Britain were badly affected by flooding over a fourteen-week period in the winter of 2015/2016. The flooding had considerable impacts on numerous communities, including private homes, business premises, transport infrastructure and agricultural land.

This study looks at what communities at risk of flooding know and feel about Natural Flood Management (NFM). NFM can involve a variety of tools to slow down or store floodwater such as restoring natural river channels, removing flood embankments, planting trees along riverbanks, and blocking upland drains. NFM is a key part of sustainable flood risk management, so understanding attitudes to NFM can help develop approaches for engaging communities in flood risk management.

Urban creep, the process of converting gardens and other vegetated areas (which help to soak up rain), to built-up surfaces (which are impervious), is an important factor affecting surface water flood risk.  This project aimed to answer the question, what are the typical rates of urban creep for selected urban areas in Scotland? The project developed a method to map urban creep and applied it to aerial photography for Edinburgh for 1990, 2005 and 2015. This allowed the first city-wide estimates of urban creep to be produced for Scotland. 

The purpose of the Assessing the Long-term Impacts of Flooding on People and Communities project is to better understand the long-term impacts of flooding upon people and communities and to consider what types of support and advice people and communities need at different stages of a long-term recovery.