Film night: Natural flood risk management in Stroud

As one of the warmest and wettest Decembers on record spills over into a grey and soggy January, and flood risk management in urban areas continues to polarise the national conversation

… it’s easy to feel kinda helpless in the face of epic natural disasters like the Irwell floods that recently took out the 200 year old Waterside pub in Summerseat.

But as this video from Stroud District Council shows (and as we suggested a couple of weeks ago) properly insight-driven urban flood defence often has very little to do with conventional steel-and-concrete hard-engineering solutions.

Especially when your town sits at the confluence of lots of steep little streams that once funnelled hydropower down to your ancestors’ mills, but now just drop hundreds of cumecs of flood water into your own modern homes and businesses…

… why not try holding most of that rainfall back in the hills with natural materials instead – and a truly whole-community and Catchment Based Approach to flood risk management?

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