Stakeholders are vital to the success of all NFM projects. These can include a group, an organisation, a community or an individual. This topic brings together any material related to stakeholders such as stakeholder engagement principles and techniques, project management structures and information from intermediaries. It can also include a mix of experiences and lessons learnt from the view point of a stakeholder.
A report has been produced by the Environment Agency that evaluates their Natural Flood Management programme. Between 2017 and 2021, £15 million of government funding was invested in 60 pilots across England. The report looks at 4 phases of NFM project lifecycle; a) Partnership working, b) Valuing benefits and project assessment, c) Project implementation and d) monitoring and sustaining the benefits.
The Forestry Commission, Scottish Forestry, Natural Resources Wales and Northern Ireland Forest Service have published a new UK-wide guide outlining how our forests and woodlands can reduce the damaging effects and financial impact of flooding on vulnerable communities. Woodlands can play a key role in flood mitigation and make an important contribution to reducing downstream flood risk.
A new open access book entitled “Spatial Flood Risk Management: Implementing Catchment-based Retention and Resilience on Private Land” has been published. Centralising the role of land and landowners, the book brings together knowledge from socio-economy, public policy, hydrology, geomorphology, and engineering to establish an interdisciplinary knowledge base on spatial approaches to managing flood risks. It contains chapters from over 25 different European authors and is an output from the EU funded COST action "Natural Flood Retention on Private Land".
The Riverwoods initiative (see main website for more info) aims to create a network of thriving riverbank woodlands and healthy river systems across Scotland. It has recently published an interactive storymap which allows users to explore projects across Scotland and find out more generally on the initiative. This storymap can be accessed below.
A manual supporting the implementation of Natural Flood Management measures has been published by CIRIA. It aims to set out the key stages in the delivery process of NFM. The manual has five parts which cover an overview of NFM, the philosophy behind NFM, detailed information behind a selection of measures, the delivery process and a supporting appendices. The manual can be accessed via the link below.
A new policy note has been published by the Centre of Expertise for Waters on "Better Buffer Design, Placement and Management". The publication was produced by the James Hutton Institute and examines how considering an enhanced range of designs, and targeting them to most suitable landscapes and pressures on the environment, can be achieved to improve multiple outcomes (e.g. flood management), including aspects of wider context for improving the uptake of enhanced riparian measures. Many of the measures presented here could be viewed as Natural Flood Management approaches.
The Scottish Government’s Dynamic Coast project took a major step forward this year, with the publication of new research on coastal change across Scotland. DynamicCoast.com has been updated to reflect the latest science, outputs and tools now available for partners to use in NFM, resilience and adaptation planning. The work was funded via CREW and the St Andrews Links, the research was conducted by the University of Glasgow and managed by NatureScot.
International Guidelines on Natural and Nature-Based Features (NNBF) for Flood Risk Management have now been published. The guidelines provide practitioners with the best available information concerning various elements of NNBF implementation. The guidelines cover a series of land uses and measures from uplands to coastal measures. They were developed as part of an international collaboration and the guidelines contain 20 chapters. Please click the link below to get more information on this publication and to download the guidelines.
The Engineering with Nature initiative has now launched a new book "Engineering With Nature: An Atlas, Volume 2". The book showcases 62 international projects that demonstrate the concept of Engineering with Nature. Two Scottish case studies are highlighted in the new volume of the Atlas (Eddleston Water and River Nairn restoration projects). Please visit the link below for more information on the Atlas.
A newly published paper in the international journal Water Security (Hankin, Page, McShane, Chappell, Spray, Black & Comins 2021) features results from Scotland’s Eddleston Water NFM study in attempting to answer this important question.