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National Flood Forum, which are nowalso involved
in the process of flood risk communication.
All these professionals have responsibilities not
only to communicate effectively at the public
interface, but also to act as a source of information
to each other and other professional agencies, as
suggested by the pattern of linkages in Figure 19.2.
All of this requires new communication skills
channels, and new tools fit for the internet age
(Table 19.1).
The rest of this chapter covers three topics.
Firstly we explore the challenges involved in the
incorporation of scientists' formulations of floods
(rainfall and runoff models) into the work of
flood risk professionals. Secondly, the 'intra-
professional' communication challenges that ex-
ist between flood risk professionals are briefly
explored. The final section considers professional
communications with the public. The chapter
draws on research on flood risk communications
in the UK carried out as part of our work for
Research Priority Area 7 for the Flood Risk Man-
agement Research Consortium.
not defined as scientists or professionals, and
many of them well-informed and increasingly
engaged. Additionally, these categories some-
times overlap, as the EA in England and Wales
employs professionals whomwe would think of as
scientists but whose role also embraces risk trans-
lation; moreover, the professional journalist is
hard to categorize as the media have a parallel and
largely reflexive relationship with both the public
and flood risk professionals.
In this chapter we also choose to include con-
sideration of the internal communications that
occur between these flood risk professionals them-
selves, referred to here as 'intra-professional' com-
munications. In England and Wales, the
responsibility for flood riskmanagement falls large-
lywithin the professionals of the EA. But because of
the change in policy outlined above, EA managers
are now required to communicate with (and be
open to) influence by the views of not only the
public in flood-affected areas, but also with this
much wider parallel professional stakeholder com-
munity (Defra/EA/2002, 2004). These other profes-
sional stakeholders include emergency service
managers, for whom emergency training and ex-
ercises remain a high-level professional activity.
They also include spatial planners, the insurance
industry, managers of utility companies, and jour-
nalists, who clearly regard themselves as
risk communication professionals. At the same
time, the field of flood risk communication
has witnessed an increase in the number of local
flood action groups, as well as the formation of a
Communications between Science
and Flood Risk Professionals
In all the professional settings identified above,
the incorporation of scientific formulations of
flooding has expanded enormously, and theoreti-
cally these advances should make professional
exchange easier and faster, as this knowledge is
Table 19.1
Communication tools for risk and/or uncertainty
Normal science tools
Post-normal science tools
Social tools
Rainfall-runoff models plus GLUE
methodology (Generalised Likelihood Uncertainty
Estimation methodology)
Softer communication tools, e.g. NUSAP
tools (Copernicus Institute)
Focus groups
Radar prediction/forecasts and `nowcasts'
Warnings with uncertainty weightings
Open consultation vehicles
Event-frequency curves
Risk zonation maps weighted for
error/uncertainty
Newspapers,TV and radio
Probability density functions
Public hearings
Bayesian tools
Lea ets
Booklets
User-friendly webpages with nested
interrogation levels (progessive detail)
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