By Sophie Dawson
Last week (4th – 6th June) I was lucky enough to attend Flood and Coast 2024 hosted by CIWEM with the Project Groundwater Northumbria team.
“Flood & Coast is not just an industry-leading annual event. It is an inclusive, diverse community of people working towards a sustainable future. It’s a space to share, debate and celebrate innovative solutions aimed at helping the people and places most at risk from flooding and coastal erosion.”
It was my first time attending so I was looking forward to experiencing all that was on offer.
Exploring the FCIP Stand
I started by checking out the FCIP stand and grabbing a coffee at the F-SIP Café.
“Flood and Coastal Innovation Programme (FCIP) – includes 25 FCRIP projects demonstrating how practical innovative actions can improve resilience to flooding and coastal erosion in a changing climate”
Flood and Coastal Resilience Innovation Programme | Engage Environment Agency (engagementhq.com)
It was great to see some of the other fantastic projects under FCRIP. I felt particularly proud of the contributions from the northeast of England; Stronger Shores (South Tyneside Council), Flood AI (Northumberland County Council), Community SUDS (Durham County Council), Tees Tidelands (Stockton on Tees Council ) and of course Project Groundwater Northumbria (Gateshead Council).
Supporting the stand gave me the opportunity to share the work being done by Project Groundwater Northumbria (PGN) and how it is helping towards achieving FCIP’s overarching goals.
I was also inspired by the other projects being showcased on community focused engagement and education.
One of my favourite exhibits of the event was a virtual reality sandbox by Devon Resilience Innovation Project. The sandbox could interactively display multiple scenarios, and clearly show how different flood management solutions work.
Being a visual learner myself, I loved how effective and engaging this was. We could use something similar to show underground groundwater interaction which will help our communities have a better understanding of groundwater flood risk.
Empowering Women in FCERM
During the conference I spoke with some of the inspirational women in the Women in FCERM networking event. https://womeninfcerm.org/
It was interesting to listen to different experiences from across the industry, as well as how the industry has changed over time. It was positive to hear that things are moving in the right way, and networking not only with inspirational women, but also people who are champions and advocates in their workplace.
Sharing experiences with my table, I realised that a lack of confidence is more common than I believed. After hearing the speakers make their own pledges, I made my own personal pledge to be more confident moving forward. I also decided that I would join the Women in FCERM mentoring scheme after hearing great feedback from past mentees.
Proudly, in our PGN team we have lot of talented women.
Collaboration and Learning Through Games
Monopoly better watch out! I really enjoyed playing the collaboration game developed by Jacobs.
Receiving the personality trait card “gets emotional easy” was a great icebreaker with the team, and everyone played their cards brilliantly. It revealed how different personality traits can make collaboration more difficult to achieve, although I was pleased with how our group worked together so effectively as total strangers. Apart from the learning and understanding brought about by the game, we all really enjoyed it. One of our group members actually asked if she could take it home to play with friends!
I really like the idea of using games as an engaging method of learning; and I will definitely be thinking about how we can use this in our future STE(A)M engagement sessions.
Nature-Based Solutions for Flood Risk Management
Farmer Andrew Metcalfe delivered an interesting talk on how nature based solutions have been successful on his farm. It was great to hear of solutions that not only work for reducing flood risk, but bring additional benefits such as increased soil quality and animal welfare. It highlighted the importance of solutions that benefit everyone in flood risk management.
