Project and Community Readiness Assessments

As part of a Joint Research Programme project ‘Working Together to Adapt to a Changing Climate: Flood and Coast’, we developed guidance to support community engagement around climate change adaptation in situations where engagement might be challenging with the possibility that some places will not be protected from flood and coastal erosion risk in the longer term. We designed and tested two engagement tools, to assess the levels of readiness of different groups of stakeholders to take part in conversations about climate change adaptation and have since used these engagement tools, at both a local community level working with a coastal community and with several multi-stakeholder project partnerships to assess and develop the readiness of the partnership to deliver innovative projects as part of the Government’s Flood and Coastal Resilience Innovation Programme.

Working with a community at risk of increased flooding from surface water, we developed a simulation process – a role-playing tool used to support stakeholders in their engagement with the challenges of surface water flooding in an urban context. A local steering group was closely involved in developing the simulation process and included residents, Caterham Flood Action Group, A Better Caterham, Tandridge District Council, Surrey County Council, Caterham on the Hill Parish Council, London Borough of Croydon, Thames Water and the Environment Agency. We then used the simulation as part of a wider engagement process with local community groups, young people and local authorities to help them explore potential solutions for managing surface water flood risk, the challenges different solutions might present and the discussion of trade-offs that might be required. Following on from this work, we have now been commissioned to develop a simulation to support engagement in coastal areas.