Identification of Sites Prone to Flooding

Sites Prone to Flooding

People who are <add link: registered> on the site can <add link: add> to their own property as a site prone to flooding. Sites prone to flooding are categorised as:

• Flat - people living in ground floor flats may be at increased risk of needing evacuation, but equally may be able to rely on neighbours living above them
• House - typical two or more storey houses allow residents to move to the upper storeys in the event of flooding
• Bungalow - a single storey house where flooding would severely affect the ability to stay in the property
• Non-residential - shops, industrial buildings, schools, etc. with no permanent occupancy
• Roadway - a roadway or right of way that when flooded may prevent normal access or travel
• Field or garden - field, public space or private garden
• Area prone to flooding - an unspecified area that floods. This may include properties (which are logged individually), roads, etc
• Spring - Source of underground water
• Culvert - Areas where the river or streams run in underground tunnels

Additional information recorded for residential sites:

• a general description or special notes about that site
• will assistance be needed should the property flood
• will the occupant(s) need to be evacuated in the event of a flood

The database used to log flood sites is partitioned into a number of General Areas. This is to provide security and ensure data confidentiality is maintained. Access to the flood data is restricted as below:

• Public - i.e. access from individuals not logged onto the site - no access to any flood data
• Registered users - i.e. users who have registered on the website. Will only be able to see the "Areas prone to flooding" and their own property , if they have added it as a flood site. Providing:
  • They have provided a valid UK address
  • That address lies within one of the defined General Areas
• Members of the Flood Group for that General Area who are registered on the website. Will have access to all flood sites for that General Area and be able to register new sites.

Infrastructure problems that can cause flooding

The website will maintain an asset list and map of all relevant parts of the infrastructure such as road-drains, culverts, watercourses, sluice gates, attenuation ponds and similar. This will enable regular checking of this infrastructure and faults to be logged and reported to the relevant authorities. This website will maintain a record of these reports to allow progress on resolving them to be monitored or chased up.

It will also serve to identify those parts of the infrastructure that will require more substantial corrective work. For example drainage from older estates where surface and foul water share the same drains. In times of heavy rainfall, these can overflow allowing seage into the watercourse.

Flooding events

Each time a registered site floods, this flooding event can be recorded on the website. Information that is recorded is:

• Date of the event
• Time or approximate time (4 periods per day) the flooding started
• Nature of the flooding defined as:
  • Property Internal
  • Property external
  • Out building
  • Property access
  • Footpath
  • Roadway
  • Field or garden
• Severity of the flooding defined on a 5 point scale as:
  • Water less than 200mm depth
  • Water between 200mm and 500mm depth
  • Water more than 500mm depth
  • Water and sewage less than 200mm depth
  • Water and sewage more than 200mm depth
• Source of the flooding is know:
  • Drains
  • Sewers
  • Groundwater
  • River
  • Field runoff
• Notes associated with that flood event

This information will be used to improve the accuracy of the flood reporting system by using AI to link the rainfall warnings and monitor data to the actual events downstream.