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Watermark update
The final report on ‘Exercise Watermark’ is to be released next month, outlining the key areas for improvement in the UK’s flood resistance strategy.
Conducted in March of this year, it was Britain’s biggest ever civil emergency exercise aimed at evaluating response strategy in the event of widespread flooding. It tested the key recommendations made by the Pitt Review in the wake of the 2007 floods, which saw More than 55,000 homes and businesses flooded.
Sir Michael Pitt’s report released in 2008 outlined four key areas for review:
- The quality of flood warnings & communication between the Environment Agency and the Met Office.
- Environment agency and councils’ technical capabilities, in order for them to take a more central role in future flood risk management.
- Preparation and information to allow for better planning and higher levels of protection for critical infrastructure, to avoid the loss of vital resources such as water and power.
- Lessons to be learned from other countries responses to flooding and applied to the UK.
The exercise set out to locate the weaknesses identified by Pitt on a more local level, and make specific recommendations for improvement. Over 20,000 individuals took part putting all agencies involved in flood management to the test. This consisted of over 125 activities across the country with support from the National Flood Forum (NFF), emergency responders, members of the public and community groups.
Activities were carried out within communities to test current flood resilience plans, and also to raise public awareness in areas that did not yet have these in place. By better preparing the public for severe flood situations it is hoped that the pressure on emergency services could be eased.
One key problem identified in the Pitt review and addressed by Watermark was the lack of information received by the emergency services. The interim report has earmarked the Environment Agency as being responsible for improving this. It has been suggested that this could be achieved via a series of programmes aimed at explaining warning codes and weather products used for forecasting floods:
‘Feedback suggests that LRFs (Local Resilience Forums) and LGDs (Local Government Departments) have a limited understanding of the Met Office and Flood Forecasting Centre weather products and the Environment Agency’s Flood Warnings. They contain frequent use of technical terminology and can be confusing over the depiction and implications of potential rainfall and flooding scenarios.’
The final report will be published on the Defra and Welsh Government websites in October 2011.
Click here to view the interim report.
