Shaping policy through science education

By communicating risks of flooding and uncertainty of flood science to local governments, a team of University of Oxford researchers hope to reduce the effects of future natural disasters.

In the UK, over 5 million people live in areas at serious risk of flooding – and the floods of 2007 dramatically affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of people due to insufficient planning. As a result, government recommendations recently called for an increased involvement from the Environment Agency and local authorities to better prepare for flooding in the future.

That is where Flood Organization Science and Technology Exchange Research, or Project FOSTER, hopes to make an impact. A collaborative project between the University of Oxford and the University of Gloucestershire, this synthesis of physical and social science aims to improve the flood science understanding of those responsible for emergency and disaster management, building development, and planning for local communities.

By targeting those involved in local government around the UK, Project FOSTER is providing a clear understanding of flood science, risk and uncertainty to local authorities. To do that, the team has developed a range of flood science education resources, from videos to information packs, and is trialling them using lectures, role-playing activities and even virtual learning environments based in Second Life.

Those resources and teaching styles are being used to assess the most effective ways of educating members of the Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, and Warwickshire County Councils – and so far the project has reached over 100 participants. By strengthening relationships between local authorities and academia, and providing an optimized set of resources with which councils can continue to educate their employees, the researchers are kick-starting a national system of best practice for planning and dealing with floods.

By closely monitoring participants’ experiences, the team are feeding back findings to scientists involved with the study to help them tailor their research to the specific needs of local authorities. Not only that, but techniques the team are using will benefit social science researchers, providing future projects with clearer ideas on how to teach science and communicate risk.

Project FOSTER is creating a more open relationship between flood scientists and councils, and instilling local authorities with a better understanding of risk and uncertainty. With that undeniably comes better planning and a more forward-thinking approach to flooding, which should make disasters like those in 2007 far less common in the future.

Funded by: The Natural Environment Research Council.