Flood risk planning faces rising tide of uncertainty

Flood risk planning is often discussed in terms of engineering projects, investment programmes and environmental initiatives.

Yet behind every intervention lies a more fundamental challenge - how do decision-makers take action when the future remains uncertain?

That question sits at the heart of Ousewem, a City of York Council-led partnership funded through Defra's £200m Flood and Coastal Resilience Innovation Programme, helping communities and businesses across the River Ouse catchment become more resilient to flooding and climate change.

While it includes practical activity on the ground, it is also helping to answer a broader question facing decision-makers across York and North Yorkshire: how do you make the right decisions when certainty is impossible?

Working alongside City of York Council, North Yorkshire Council and other Ousewem partners, York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority is working to ensure lessons from the project inform future climate adaptation, flood resilience and investment decisions.

Across the region, this means drawing on a wide range of information.

Scientific modelling helps predict how weather patterns and flood risks may change over time, while local data and environmental monitoring provide valuable insights into how individual catchments behave.

Just as importantly, the experiences of residents, businesses, landowners and communities who have lived through flooding help provide a real-world understanding of where vulnerabilities exist and what approaches may be most appropriate in different places.

The challenge is helping communities adapt to uncertainty, says Andy Kerr, YNYCA's Director of Economy. He says flood resilience decisions cannot wait for perfect information.

These decisions often involve balancing environmental, economic and community priorities, sometimes with incomplete information.

Organisations must act on the best evidence available, including natural flood management, modelling and local perspectives, while remaining flexible as climate risks evolve.

He believes initiatives such as Ousewem demonstrate the value of regional collaboration, helping communities become more resilient in the face of change.

Andy said: "We can't search for perfect solutions and not take action. The evidence around climate change, flooding and flood risk is going to continually change and be updated.

“We've got to be flexible. If the evidence changes, we need to find new solutions. We've got to be pragmatic."There's the human cost of the impact if we don't prepare.

“Getting flooded, as a homeowner or a business, is absolutely catastrophic for individuals. You've got to think of what the cost of not doing anything is.

Intervention and prevention can safeguard significant costs further down the line.

It's about balancing investment today versus future needs.

He says it's also about learning to live with water: "We could continue building larger and larger defences, but that isn't a realistic way people will live their lives.

"The river is a massive part of the city and people want to interact with it and live with it.

"Rain and rivers don't care about local authority boundaries. The power of devolution is that we can work as a single region. The Mayor can bring people together. That's a superpower.”

Understanding risk is one challenge; explaining it is another.While communities rightly want reassurance, flood resilience is not about eliminating risk entirely.

Instead, it is about helping places become better prepared, more adaptable and more capable of responding to future events.

Lucy Allis, YNYCA's interim Senior Strategy Manager for Low Carbon and Environment, admits communicating uncertainty honestly while maintaining public confidence is a big challenge.

She said: "It's difficult, because uncertainty is obviously uncomfortable. It is something that we have to live with, because all we can really do is prepare for the most likely, or the worst scenario.

" Reassuring residents that things are happening and that we're learning from different impacts is also important."

For Ousewem partners, one of the most valuable aspects has been the opportunity to combine technical expertise with local knowledge.

By bringing together evidence from modelling, environmental monitoring and lived experience, Ousewem is helping build a more complete understanding of how catchments function and how evidence can support future decisions.

Lucy said: "Ousewem is a good example, because of the crossover with land use and farmer engagement.

"It’s important to get the perspectives of people with lived experience, like farmers who live with this every day, especially around land use,” she said.

“It helps to understand real potential impacts. Some conversations have been about stress. It's important to know how it can put a greater strain on our health service."

When the next big flood will come, nobody knows.

What is certain is that organisations will continue to face difficult decisions in an uncertain future.

The challenge is ensuring communities are as prepared and resilient as possible.

Lucy added: "Unfortunately, we don't have a crystal ball. We can't say with certainty, but we can be prepared for more."

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