How to Exchange Stories of Local Flood Resilience From Flood Rich Areas to the Flooded Areas of the Future

ABSTRACT

Flood risk communication requires strong attention to message, messenger and timing within the adaptive cycle. This paper evaluates research that used a co-production of knowledge model to create digital stories from an archive of flood memories, garnered from residents affected by the severe UK summer 2007 floods. We explored whether a knowledge exchange process could: deliver on community members’ desires to share lay flood knowledge for local resilience; inject experience of new digital media to support local/national flood risk management agencies, and meet aspirations of academic researchers to explore how flood memories might contribute to building local capital for resilience. We found more fluid versions of co-production were needed, reflecting how roles of researcher, participant and organization continually shifted throughout the process, with a “knowledge brokering/ technology capital” role for the researcher. Digital storytelling did ultimately allow personal stories to travel beyond flood-affected areas, and be shared within communities and flood risk management organizations, allowing peer-to-peer communication of flood resilience knowledge beyond the local.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital storytelling
• sustainable flood memory
• local knowledge
• flood risk
• resilience

Acknowledgments

The authors thank all participants in the project, Joanne Garde Hansen for her insightful input, and the referees for their valuable critique.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 65 residents and 30 institutional actors were interviewed (94 recorded hours). Overall gender balance was 55 males and 40 females, age distribution of 32 respondents over 65; 50 aged 41–65 years; nine aged 25–40 years; and four under 25 years.

2 Meetings between project stakeholders (including the environmental regulator) took place quarterly at the University.

3 [Sony] Vegas Pro 14 editing software.

4 The SFM project built on a series of “engaged” research projects (2004-) that had involved partnership working between researchers and members of the public in the River Severn catchment. Three participants in the SFM project had not only contributed to this project but had also taken part in other community-based research projects between 2004–6 and 2010/11.

5 Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afd1r9056BQ

6 Taken from the SFM Project flier for a community digital storytelling workshop.

7 Events included: 2014: Tewkesbury Flood risk and resilience, UK; 2015: Exeter St Thomas Emergency Group Meeting, UK; Manor Park Flood Action group in Slough, UK.

8 “Active forgetting” also known as repression of memories (McEwen et al., 2018).

9 By hydrological modeling.

10 Thumim (2009, p. 626) discusses the “ordinary/extraordinary” dichotomy in digital storytelling.

11 Reflective evaluation sheets (10 questions) were handed out after events.

12 See, for example, “Abbey Terrace: A village on its own” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hhJG3VsAPY and https://esrcfloodmemories.wordpress.com/flood-stories-exchanging-learning/

13 Of the 13 stories drafted during the workshop, none were completed on the day. Some were later completed in the homes of the teller, or via phone and email contact. Two stories remained incomplete after the tellers could not be subsequently contacted.

 

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC ) [grant number RES-062-23-2783, ES/I003576/2 and ES/K00767X/1].