Supporting the use of nature-based solutions to flood risks in Britain
The Rivers Trust has helped to accelerate the delivery of Natural Flood Management strategies (NFM) to support more local organisations, community groups, farmers and volunteers to work together more effectively against flood risk.
Issue
The Rivers Trust is a strong advocate of Natural Flood Management strategies (NFM), using nature-based solutions to manage and reduce flood risk, such as planting trees, wetlands, and leaky dams.
The Rivers Trust wanted to make their existing data of river catchments and natural flood management strategies widely available, to accelerate the use of NFM projects and improve collaboration between communities working in similar locations.
Approach
The Rivers Trust used Esri’s ArcGIS Hub Premium and ArcGIS Experience Builder solutions to map out and visualise a national database of information on river catchments, including NFM projects that are planned, in progress or completed throughout England and Wales.
Over 50 catchment-scale or community-led projects were plotted and made publicly available.
Impact
The NFM Hub is now used by around 80 groups, growing in number, from member river trusts and conservation charities to small community-led flood action groups, enabling these organisations to easily access information about their local river environments and gather evidence of the need for nature-based solutions
In Wyre, a local Rivers Trust used the NFM Hub in its work with the Churchtown Flood Action Group, a group formed to help prevent a repeat of the devasting flooding of 2015.
The NFM Hub has empowered local communities, including residents, landowners and volunteers, to drive change, by giving them the information they need in a format that is easy to understand.
The development of the NFM Hub has offered a mechanism to encourage investment in regional NFM projects. The Wyre NFM project has successfully raised £1.5million of green and blended finance and uses the NFM Hub to engage with stakeholders.
To see it on a map puts it all into place. From the Wyre Rivers Trust to farmers to individual people in the communities, we can do so much if we work together.Andrew Metcalf, a farmer in Wyresdale
Explore more
- Organisation: The Rivers Trust, ESRI
- Read the case study
- Explore the NFM Hub