Scaling up social learning and innovation to support community flood resilience with Project Groundwater, UK

Abstract

‘Resilience’ has become a guiding principle in the flood risk sector. With the acceptance that not all flooding can be prevented, risk management authorities (RMAs) need to build long-term, trusting relationships with communities at risk to support local level responses. Yet traditional top-down norms remain problematic; there is an urgent need for social innovation and learning in the sector. The paper details participatory action research with a UK Government-funded partnership collectively building community resilience to groundwater flooding in southern England. The research has surfaced the largely tacit, intangible, and hence hitherto unacknowledged engagement skills and practices.  Furthermore, the research found that the status quo has been challenged, with novel multi-disciplinary processes transforming norms towards a collaborative relationship with communities. The paper finally considers the current project-by-project nature of engagement, which risks communities feeling abandoned when the funding ends.  In addition to the resource implications for maintaining participatory competencies for capacity and relationship building with communities, the biggest challenge is seen to be that of wider culture change; to consider how the scaling up of social innovation beyond the project helps underpin lasting change in the sector.

Keywords: community resilience, community engagement, social innovation, innovation scaling, flood risk, groundwater flooding