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Flood-Risk Management, Mapping, and Planning: The Institutional Politics of Decision Support in England

Author

Listed:
  • James Porter

    (School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, England)

  • David Demeritt

    (Department of Geography, King's College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, England)

Abstract

Flood maps play an increasingly prominent role in government strategies for flood-risk management. Maps are instruments not just for defining and communicating flood risks, but also for regulating them and for rationalizing the inevitable limits and failures of those controls. Drawing on policy document analysis, official statistics, and 66 key-informant interviews, this paper explores the institutional conflicts over the use of the Environment Agency (EA) Flood Map to support decision making by English local planning authorities (LPAs), whose local political mandate, statutory obligations, and professionalized planning culture put them at odds with the narrower bureaucratic imperative of the Agency to restrict developments at risk of flooding. The paper shows how the Flood Map was designed to standardize and script the planning process and ensure that LPA decisions were aligned with EA views about avoiding development in zones at risk of flooding without actually banning such development outright. But technologies are also shaped by their users, and so the paper documents how planners accommodated and resisted this technology of indirect rule. Their concerns about sterilizing areas depicted as being at risk of flooding and about the difficulties of actually using the Flood Map for speedy and defensible development-control decisions were crucial in its eventual replacement by a new decision-support technology, Strategic Flood Risk Assessments, which then led to the descripting of the Flood Map to influence a new set of users: the public. The paper closes with some wider reflections on the significance of the case for risk-based governance.

Suggested Citation

  • James Porter & David Demeritt, 2012. "Flood-Risk Management, Mapping, and Planning: The Institutional Politics of Decision Support in England," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 44(10), pages 2359-2378, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:44:y:2012:i:10:p:2359-2378
    DOI: 10.1068/a44660
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    2. Garbarino, Nicola & Guin, Benjamin & Lee, Jonathan, 2022. "The Effects of Subsidized Flood Insurance on Real Estate Markets," Bank of England working papers 995, Bank of England.
    3. Małgorzata Dudzińska & Barbara Prus & Radosław Cellmer & Stanisław Bacior & Katarzyna Kocur-Bera & Anna Klimach & Agnieszka Trystuła, 2020. "The Impact of Flood Risk on the Activity of the Residential Land Market in a Polish Cultural Heritage Town," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(23), pages 1-18, December.
    4. Davor Kvočka & Reza Ahmadian & Roger A Falconer, 2018. "Predicting Flood Hazard Indices in Torrential or Flashy River Basins and Catchments," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 32(7), pages 2335-2352, May.
    5. Kristian Krieger, 2013. "The limits and variety of risk‐based governance: The case of flood management in Germany and England," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 7(2), pages 236-257, June.
    6. Alex Y. Lo & Faith Chan, 2017. "Preparing for flooding in England and Wales: the role of risk perception and the social context in driving individual action," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 88(1), pages 367-387, August.
    7. Elliott, Rebecca, 2021. "Insurance and the temporality of climate ethics: accounting for climate change in US flood insurance," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 107925, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    8. Peltola, Taru & Tuomisaari, Johanna, 2016. "Re-inventing forestry expertise: Strategies for coping with biodiversity protection in Finland," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 11-18.
    9. Krystyna Solarek & Marta Kubasińska, 2022. "Local Spatial Plans in Supporting Sustainable Water Resources Management: Case Study from Warsaw Agglomeration—Kampinos National Park Vicinity," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(10), pages 1-27, May.
    10. Sarah Ellen Percival & Mark Gaterell & David Hutchinson, 2020. "Effective flood risk visualisation," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 104(1), pages 375-396, October.
    11. Thaler, Thomas & Löschner, Lukas & Hartmann, Thomas, 2017. "The introduction of catchment-wide co-operations: Scalar reconstructions and transformation in Austria in flood risk management," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 563-573.
    12. Nazmul Huq & Alexander Stubbings, 2015. "How is the Role of Ecosystem Services Considered in Local Level Flood Management Policies: Case Study in Cumbria, England," Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management (JEAPM), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 17(04), pages 1-29, December.
    13. Thanti Octavianti & Katrina Charles, 2019. "The evolution of Jakarta’s flood policy over the past 400 years: The lock-in of infrastructural solutions," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 37(6), pages 1102-1125, September.
    14. Maria Paula Escobar & David Demeritt, 2017. "Paperwork and the decoupling of audit and animal welfare: The challenges of materiality for better regulation," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 35(1), pages 169-190, February.
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    16. Rözer, Viktor & Surminski, Swenja, 2021. "Current and future flood risk of new build homes across different socio-economic neighbourhoods in England and Wales," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 108923, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

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