CIWEM president Hannah Burgess reflects on 22 years in FCERM

27 May 2025

Why mainstreaming adaptation and community resilience is now essential in the face of climate change

I joined the flood and coastal erosion risk management (FCERM) industry in 2003, a geographer fresh out of university. So much has changed over these 22 years, as climate change bites and our approach to assessing flood risk continues to evolve to include multiple sources.

The latest statistics from the Environment Agency tell us that in England alone, 6.3 million properties are at risk of flooding, with 4.6m of those at risk of surface water flooding. The biggest change I’ve observed since starting out in the sector has been growing recognition of the scale of surface water flood risk.

Greater understanding and action to manage multiple sources of flooding was driven by the floods of summer 2007, where thousands of properties flooded from surface water flooding. More recently there’s an increasing focus on schemes that tackle more than one flooding source, driven by the partnership working between flood management organisations set out in the Flood and Water Management Act for England and Wales and in similar legislation elsewhere in the UK.

An end to silos

In this time there has also been a growing recognition of the need to work across sectors and break out of silos to design places that better manage flood risk and coastal change. Engineered FCERM schemes alone cannot solve these challenges. Flooding from all sources should be considered, working with land use planners and major infrastructure providers.

Data and modelling have been fuelled by increasingly rapid adoption of new technology to inform decision making using digital representations of our river systems and coastlines. For example, from one-dimensional river models 20 years ago to integrated catchment models today that can read in real-time data and run hundreds of ‘what if’ scenarios.

There is also an increasing urgency to manage flood risk on a catchment basis. This is not a new concept but it is challenging to bring together decision making on flood management, water resources and water quality, and environmental improvements. It is still the case, unfortunately, that multiple strategic plans, led by different parts of different organisations, drive catchment management in different directions. These silos are being broken down in some places, however, for example with ground-breaking projects like the Severn Valley Water Management scheme.

What has been most rewarding is seeing an increasingly diverse FCERM community that reflects the communities that we serve. It has been a while since I have been the only woman in a meeting, which was common at the start of my career. The establishment of initiatives such as Women in FCERM and WEM Pride mark great strides forward in diversity and inclusion, although there remains much to be done.

Understanding resilience

Climate change is today’s problem to solve – we cannot simply kick the can down the road to solve it in the future. If we do not adapt at pace now then our natural environment will respond in an unmanaged way to increasingly severe rainfall, rising sea levels and higher rates of coastal erosion. Communities will need support to adapt and become more resilient in light of climate change. How can we, as an industry, ensure this adaptation takes place?

We need to mainstream adaptation and resilience now, building on the many successful coastal and flood management pilots of the last 10-15 years and learning lessons where things didn’t work.

That means being clear on what we mean by resilience when it comes to working with communities. Resilience cannot be done to a community, rather it should be done with a community. Nor is it an action undertaken by one organisation – it’s no good just constructing a capital scheme and then moving on to the next one.

Resilience is a set of ongoing actions undertaken by a range of players, including residents and businesses, that ‘nibble away’ at a flood risk issue faster than the issue is aggravated by climate change. It’s residents making homes more resilient. It’s community flood action groups, supported by Risk Management Authorities to build community capacity, the resources and attributes within a community that enable it to address its problems and improve its well-being. It’s planners trying to reduce flood risk to existing communities through new development. And it’s through combining multiple funding streams to tackle multiple sources of flooding through a range of capital and maintenance interventions.

All of these should embrace technological advances such as AI where appropriate to maximise the efficiency and effectiveness of decision making.

Adaptation

Adaptation is often harder than resilience because it involves recognition that we cannot engineer our way out of climate change. The situation on our coast is most acute, with the latest analysis from the national assessment of flood and coastal erosion risk (NaFRA2) telling us that by 2105 over 10,000 properties will be at risk from coastal erosion (up from 3,500 today). In many places we will need to retreat in a managed way to avoid communities becoming blighted by this risk.

As flood and coastal professionals, we must fight for those communities at risk. That means taking measured risks and innovating. We cannot stand still. We must rise to the challenge of climate change.

Hannah Burgess will be participating in a plenary session at Flood & Coast 2025 – "Grey, blue and green, and everything in-between". This session will bring together sector-leading perspectives on integrated approaches to flood and coastal risk management, and explore what’s required to make them a reality. Learn more about this session.

You can also stay up-to-date on the latest CIWEM Presidential Team news via the CIWEM President page.

This article originally appeared in the Summer 2025 print edition of The Environment. CIWEM members can read the issue in full (and all back issues dating back to 2016) via MyCIWEM. We also publish 'The Environment' newsletter – free every month – subscribe here.