posted on 2009-02-18, 13:21authored byLee Bosher, Andrew Dainty, Patricia Carrillo, Jacqui Glass, Andrew Price
Purpose: There is a need to pro-actively address strategic weaknesses in protecting the built environment from a range
of hazards. This paper is focused on the mitigation for flood hazards in the UK; particularly in understanding the extent
of the problem, collating key guidance and legislation related to flood hazard mitigation, identifying who the key
construction decision makers are and the most opportune stages of the Design-Construction-Operation Process when
they need to make their key decisions.
Design/methodology/approach: A pluralistic research design was adopted for the study, which included a UK-wide
questionnaire survey and a set of semi-structured interviews involving a range of professionals from construction,
planning, insurance, emergency management and local/national government agencies was undertaken.
Findings: Despite the publication of a range of guidance on flood hazard mitigation in the UK there is still insufficient
evidence that key construction stakeholders are playing an active role in mitigating flood risk. The pre-construction
phase of a building’s life cycle is identified as is the most critical stage when key stakeholders need to adopt flood
hazard mitigation strategies. The socio-institutional constraints to the proactive attainment of built-in resilience are
highlighted as are recommendations as to how these constraints can be addressed.
Research limitations/implications: This paper reports on the provisional findings of an ongoing project but these
findings nonetheless provide essential foundations for the latter development of the PRE-EMPT toolkit and also raise
some important considerations about flood resilience in the UK.
Originality/value: The findings presented reveal how stakeholders should be better involved, and what issues they
need to address, regarding the integration of built-in resilience into construction decision making.
Funding
Funding for this research came from the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council
(EPSRC) in the UK, via the Innovative Manufacturing and Construction Research Centre
(IMCRC) at Loughborough University
History
School
Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering
Research Unit
Water, Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC)
Citation
BOSHER, L.S. ... et al, 2009. Attaining improved resilience to floods: a proactive multi-stakeholder approach. Disaster Prevention and Management, 18 (1), pp. 9 - 22