Over the last few weeks I have been working with some great colleagues from the Environment Agency and Jacobs consultancy, helping to develop some really useful information resources on flooding in the Thames. It’s all part of the Thames Valley Flood Scheme (TVFS), which is now open for 12 weeks of public consultation: see https://consult.environment-agency.gov.uk/thames/tvfs-home/ (closes 20 August 2021)

The scheme is looking at catchment-scale solutions to flooding: including things like natural flood management and flood storage. When these are combined with local flood risk management schemes – and individual flood awareness and flood plans – they can make a real difference to help keep people safe.

The consultation material (text, pictures, document and videos) are a really useful. There is a lot of interesting stuff in there. And it is very relevant for us in Reading, as we have significant parts of the town at risk, particularly from floods from the River Thames.

Historic and future flooding

It follows a similar structure to the ‘Past and Future Flooding on the River Thames at Reading’ presentation: something I put together in 2019 to set the scene for the Caversham and Reading flood scheme. We have built massively on that though, with a lot of expertise from communications specialists and flood risk management experts.

There were a couple of videos that I was particularly involved with. The following on the history of flooding, that Tesni and I present, hopefully brings home the message that there are big floods in our historic record…something that will happen again.

And I am pleased with this video, which helps to visualise how climate change will affect floods. This is based on a graph of decadal flood peaks that I have been using in presentations for some time. The opportunity to animate the graph has been great. Huge thanks to Jules for making that happen, and to Bea for putting it together as a video.