An assessment of flood emergency plans in England and Wales, France and the Netherlands

Lumbroso, D. and Stone, K. and Vinet, F. (2011) An assessment of flood emergency plans in England and Wales, France and the Netherlands. Natural Hazards, 58 (1). pp. 341-363.

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Abstract

This paper details research carried out in England and Wales, France and the Netherlands on the evaluation of emergency plans for floods. To assess the flood emergency plans 22 metrics were developed. These metrics covered a range of issues from the aims and objectives of the plan to training and exercises. A number of emergency plans in each of the three countries were reviewed using these metrics and online surveys of emergency planners were carried out. The objectives of the surveys were to establish what information emergency planners believe is useful to incorporate in emergency plans and at what level of detail. The developed metrics and survey of end users provided a basis to compare emergency plans. The effectiveness of an emergency plan is difficult to measure and end users often stated that this can only be assessed accurately after a plan has been used. Many emergency planners indicated that a well defined description of the roles, responsibilities and communication is essential for a plan to be effective. These aspects tended to be well covered in the evaluated plans. However, other more technical aspects such as accessibility of roads, evacuation, depiction of the flood hazard and impacts of floods on critical infrastructure can be considerably improved. The main challenge for emergency planners is to avoid filling plans with generic text and to provide an appropriate level of specific detail in the plan whilst ensuring the “usability” of the plan.

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