Sayers and Partners

Flood emergency planning involves preparing for floods and planning the response during a flood emergency. Our staff can help develop emergency plans and improve community resilience and includes the fundament skills associated with:

• Forecasting and warning
• Evacuation planning
• Probabilistic integration of defence and system failure within the emergency planning process
(including agent-based methods)

One of the most important decisions to be made in flood emergency planning is to decide whether people should be evacuated or whether they should stay in or near their homes. The decision will often be based on the likely depth and duration of flooding, the warning time and the availability of local ‘safe havens’, where people can stay during the flood event.

• For each community, define the locations where people should be evacuated to (the ‘evacuation points’)
• Define the evacuation routes and ensure that these are maintained (so that they are available when needed)
• Establish emergency shelters
• Establish evacuation procedures
• Provide information on evacuation procedures and routes to all those who will be involved with the evacuation
(including organisers and communities to be evacuated)
• Provide warnings where access routes are dangerous during floods

Note: Picture above was taken in San Antonio, US as part of a flash flood forecasting project we are contributing to.