Chapter 10: Prevention activities (aimed at risk reduction)

Prevention activities aim to either directly reduce risk or facilitate the reduction of risk, and therefore mitigate the impacts of flooding by preventing floods affecting communities in events up to the DFE used as the basis for development controls or for the design flood for mitigation works such as levees. A range of typical prevention activities are identified in Figure 2.3 and Chapter 9, with the roles of some of these in modifying flood behaviour, community response to a flood or modifying properties given in Table 10.1.

Prevention activities are discussed further in this chapter and include the following.

Flood information is the first essential element in understanding flooding. Without flood information to inform decision-making, flooding may not be an obvious issue, and therefore not considered in decision-making, or judgements on the potential impacts of flooding may be used rather than flood information to inform decision-making. Flood risk to existing communities can, in part, be due to a lack of understanding of the full range of flood behaviour and consideration of the associated risks in decisions taken when developing communities.