Resilico – Bridging the gap from warning to action
Guest Blog from John Curtin, President of CIWEM and former Chief Executive of the Environment Agency
It’s 3 AM.
Rain peppers your window, waking you just before your phone emits a loud siren and vibrates.
Odd, given that you always keep it on silent.
Checking your phone, you see an alert from the government’s warning system: you and your family are at risk of flooding. You click the link. It advises, ‘Move your family, vehicles, pets, and important items to safety, such as upstairs or to higher ground.’ What are my important items? Where is safe? Surely it’s not real—I’ve never flooded in all the years I’ve lived here.
What do I do?
Then the power fails, plunging you into darkness…
The Response Deficit
I spent over 30 years at the Environment Agency (EA) - the lead organisation for flooding in England. I spent many years leading brilliant teams developing our flood warning and forecasting services in partnership with the equally brilliant weather forecasters at the Met Office.
Since the floods of 2007 – where some 55000 homes flooded in England – developments in detecting and forecasting floods have advanced massively. We probably are world leading in flood warning and forecasting in the UK. Something we should all be proud of.
But after I left the EA something about this troubled me.
As our warnings got more and more sophisticated did we forget that flooding isn’t a technical issue it’s a people issue?
Broadly speaking there are four phases in the build up to a flood – detect a flood or storm is coming; forecast where and when it will cause flooding; warn those that are at risk – and the final phase – someone needed to respond to those warnings, to take action to save lives and reduce the flood damages that would have otherwise happened without the warning.
This nation has invested millions in the development of the first three phases of this chain –the detection, forecasting and warning of floods – but far, far less time and money has been spent on the response side. And that’s important because this incident chain is only as good as its weakest link. Even if world leading warnings give people the chance to act – if they don’t know what to do, or aren’t even aware they are at risk – how can they have prepared or take action to make the most of the time the warning has given them? Three AM, during a flood, in the dark is never a good time to create a flood plan.
I call this gap in the chain of flood incidents the response deficit. The challenge we have is how do we ensure that phase of the chain is as world leading as the other three. To give a sense of the scale of the challenge, nearly 100% of those at risk of flooding from rivers and the sea in England are now covered by the flood warning service, however a recent report by the Red Cross found only 39% of people would know what to do if they got a warning. In fact, research from the Association of British Insurers found that 76% of people haven’t even signed-up to receive flood alerts3.
This confusion is not helped by the variety of organisations involved in flooding – with each of the four UK nation’s having a different approach body and approach to warning – and different sources of flooding being the responsibility of different public bodies. One of the last things you want to be doing during a flood is trying to work out what type of water it is so you know what organisation to talk to!
Some of this deficit runs deep. Flood risk is seen as an issue the state is responsible for – if I flood the state has failed me. This is one of the downsides of excellent investment in flood defences in the past few decades – for many it has created a myth of protection – that flood defences have taken away the risk of flooding from me and my community so why do I need to prepare? And even when there is a flood haven’t I just seen a Politician on TV reminding me how many millions have been spent on defences and saying this must never happen again?
A solution – bridging the gap from warning to action?
But there are many actions people can take if they are supported and informed on how to take them – from putting together a simple flood plan discussed with the family – to investing in property level resilience measures designed to limit the damage of any flood water.
For the last year I’ve been working closely with the team behind the Resilico digital platform. Resilico is a risk management and preparedness tool that could really help reduce the response deficit.
Resilico’s prime purpose is to combine all the warnings and all alerts from all the different bodies into to one place for the end user – and then importantly help walk the individual, family or business through the steps they can practically take to help themselves and safeguard their property and treasured belongings.
Users can photograph the evidence of their actions too helping prepare for any insurance conversations that may follow. Resilico empowers the individual to take responsibility and action during a challenging time. It is a trusted source of information.
One of the elements of flooding that isn’t talked about as much as it should be is the mental health impacts of being flooded – and the on going trauma people can face each times it rains after. There is growing evidence that being prepared – and having the ability to take action yourself – can reduce the mental health impacts of the flood even if you are still flooded.
Living with flooding
Climate change has made flooding worse in the UK – and will continue to do so even if we globally reach our net zero targets. Our climate has already changed.
Now is the time to not only rely on flood defences provided by the state and hope it never happens but to assume it will happen and to help individuals, families and communities build their own resilience – to spend as much time and energy as maintaining that resilience as we do flood defences.
Resilico is a significant step in that new direction.
John Curtin, President of CIWEM and former Chief Executive of the Environment Agency
1 https://www.redcross.org.uk/-/media/documents-indexed/vulnerability-and-resilience-public-awareness-and-perceptions-of-
flood-risk-in-the-uk.pdf
2 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(17)30047-5/fulltext
3 https://www.abi.org.uk/news/news-articles/2025/8/one-in-four-remain-unaware-of-potential-flood-or-storm-risks/
