Dramatic flood events witnessed from the turn of the century have renewed political attention and, it is believed, created new opportunities for the restoration of functional floodplains to alleviate the impact of flooding on urban development. For centuries, rural and urban landowning interests have dominated floodplains and water management in England, through a ‘hegemonic discourse alliance’ on land use development and flood defence. More recently, the use of structural flood defences has been attributed to the exacerbation of flood risk in towns and cities, and we are warned if water managers proceeded with ‘business as usual’ traditional scenarios, this century is predicted to see increased severe inconveniences at best and human catastrophes at worst. The novel, sustainable and integrated policy response is highly dependent upon the planning system, heavily implicated in the loss of floodplains in the past, in finding the land for restoring functioning floodplains. Planners are urged to take this as a golden opportunity to make homes and businesses safer from flood risk, but also to create an environment with green spaces and richer habitats for wildlife. Despite supportive changes in policy, there are few urban floodplain restoration schemes being implemented in practice in England, we remain entrenched in the engineered flood defence approach and the planner’s response is deemed inadequate. The key question is whether new discourses and policy instruments on sustainable, integrated water management can be put into practice, or whether they will remain ‘lip-service’ and cannot be implemented after all. Against the backdrop of a broader modernity debate, in this thesis the English floodplain emerges as a ‘battle site’ where the planner is caught in the cross fire of an ideological clash between economic (armed with technology) and environmentalist (allied with nature) arguments and preferred change in land use. Furthering interpretative research and discourse analysis to tap and explain belief and knowledge systems rather than rational ‘fluvial systems’ per se, the thesis delves deeper than previous research, into the mind sets and ‘irrationalities’ of actors’ practices on the floodplain. The policy response advocating ‘making space for water’ and floodplain restoration is based on an overstretched steering optimism, and will continue to prove too radical if the mediating and tempering political-institutional context is not seriously addressed. If there is true commitment from the UK government, closing the current implementation deficit on floodplain restoration will require the recognition and amelioration of persisting power structures within government agencies, founded on technological and economic rationalities, and permit the planner to share responsibility, unfettered by one sided growth objectives, to find new ways of working across sectors and disciplines towards sustainable, water sensitive towns and cities.

Multi-hazard risk assessment (MHRA) has become a major concern in the risk study area, but existing approaches do not adequately meet the needs of risk mitigation planning. The main research gap in the existing approaches was identified that they cannot consider all hazard interactions when calculating possible losses. Hence, an improved MHRA model, MmhRisk-HI (Model for multi-hazard Risk assessment with a consideration of Hazard Interaction), was developed. This model calculates the possible loss caused by multiple hazards, with an explicit consideration of interaction between different hazards. A more complete perspective, the regional disaster system perspective, was selected as the basic theory, and two categories of multi-hazard risk expressions were combined in the model construction. Hazard identification, hazard analysis, hazard interaction analysis, exposure analysis and vulnerability analysis are the five basic modules of the developed model. The concept of hazard-forming environment was introduced into the MHRA research as the basis for hazard identification, hazard analysis, and hazard interaction analysis. The methods used for exposure analysis depend on the scale of the region to be addressed and the assessment units. A Bayesian Network was adopted to calculate the loss ratio in the vulnerability analysis. This developed model was applied into the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) and validated by comparison with an observed multi-hazard sequence. The validation results (simulation results are consistent with observed results in 76.36% of the counties, and the deviation of an estimated aggregate loss value from its actual value is less than 2.79%) show that this model can more effectively represent the real world, and that the outputs, possible loss caused by multiple hazards, obtained with the model are reliable. The outputs can additionally help to identify which area is at greatest risk (of loss), and allow a determination of the reasons that contribute to the greatest losses. Hence, it is a useful tool which can provide further information for planners and decision-makers concerned with risk mitigation.

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Flood risk management seeks to reduce flood consequences and probability by considering a wide range of options that include non-structural measures such as flood event management. Quantitative flood risk analysis has provided a powerful tool to support appraisal and investment in engineered flood defence. However, analysing the risks and benefits of non-structural measures have been limited making it difficult to compare the benefits of a wide range of options on a shared assessment platform. A major challenge to understand the performance of non-structural measures during a flood event is the complexity of analysing the human responses in the system that determines the successful operation of flood event management. Here presents a risk analysis approach that couples a multi-agent simulation of individual and organizational behaviour with a hydrodynamic model. The model integrates remotely sensed information on topography, buildings and road networks with empirical survey data and information on local flood event management strategies to fit characteristics of specific communities. The model has been tested in Towyn, North Wales, and subsequently used to analyse the effectiveness of flood event management procedures, including flood warning and evacuation procedures in terms of potential loss of life , economic damages and the identification of roads susceptible to congestion. The potential loss of life increases according to the magnitude of a storm surge (e.g. 11 for 1 in 100 years surges as opposed to 94 for 1 in 1000 surges). Providing 3 hours flood warning can reduce this by 67% if individuals take appropriate action. A global sensitivity analysis shows that hydrodynamic processes are only responsible for 50% of the variance in expected loss of life because actions taken by individuals and society can greatly influence the outcome. The model can be used for emergency planners to improve flood response in a flood event.

A paradigm shift towards adaptive governance of flood risk management has taken root in Europe over the last two decades. Adaptive governance has been conceptualised as a form of governance which is built through a multi-layered web of horizontally and vertically aligned stakeholders and has been termed as Sustainable Flood Risk Management (SFRM) in Scotland. SFRM in Scotland aims to promote community empowerment to build resilience against flooding, including through flood risk communication. Flood risk communication involves raising awareness of flood risk among communities and issuing flood warnings to them when needed. Although flood risk communication between agencies of the government and communities living in the areas identified to be at risk of flooding has long been a subject of policies and legislation, literature on flood risk communication indicates that a substantial gap in perspectives on flood risk remains between these social actors. Similarly, although media hold a central position in flood risk communication as conveyers of messages, literature indicates that the role of media has not been appraised satisfactorily so that it can inform media selection for flood risk communication. This thesis presents research which was aimed at addressing both these needs. Accordingly, the aim of this thesis was to identify gaps in flood risk perspectives between ‘communicating agencies’ and ‘communities at risk of flooding’, and to evaluate the suitability of various media types for flood risk communication. Correspondingly, the objectives of the research were: i)to understand community knowledge, expectations, and media usage and preferences related to flood risk communication; ii) to review communication objectives and efforts of the responsible agencies; iii) to identify differences between community knowledge, expectations, media usage and preferences, and the communication efforts of the responsible agencies; iv) to appraise the role of Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action and Media Synchronicity Theory in supporting the development of flood risk communication strategies; and iv) to consider the implications of the findings for developing effective flood risk communication strategies by the relevant agencies and make appropriate recommendations. The research entailed investigations into flood risk perspectives of the communities living in areas identified to be at risk of flooding (termed as ‘emic’ perspective) and that of the agencies responsible for flood risk communication (termed as ‘etic’ perspective) in order to generate shared understanding on flood risk, especially on community knowledge, expectations, media usage and preferences, and the communication efforts of the responsible agencies. Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action and Media Synchronicity Theory proposed by Dennis et al. were selected for investigating their applicability in supporting development of flood risk communication strategies and formulating policy recommendations. The research adopted an inductive research stance, with interpretivism as the epistemological paradigmatic position and constructionism as the ontological paradigmatic position. Data relating to the perspectives, experiences and communication needs of members of the communities living in areas identified to be at risk of flooding were collected through postal surveys, one-to-one interviews and focus groups in three locations in Scotland: Edinburgh, Stirling and Callander. The research also carried out interviews with representatives of government agencies which were endowed with statutory responsibilities for flood risk communication with the communities, including the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA), The City of Edinburgh Council, Stirling Council, Central Scotland Police, Lothian and Borders Police and Central Scotland Fire & Rescue Services. The research found substantial gaps in terms of knowledge, levels of preparedness, understanding of responsibilities and sources of information in the field of flood risk communication in Scotland at the levels of legislation, policy and practice; and these contrasted sharply with the societal goal of SFRM. Furthermore, the expectations of the communities on flood risk communication differed significantly from the understandings of the communicating agencies. The research also found serious gaps in terms of media use and preferences between communicating agencies and the concerned communities at risk of flooding. These gaps in communication appeared to have contributed to loss of trust and credibility of the agencies amongst the communities. The research also found that practicing ‘communicative action’ proposed by the Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action, which entails stakeholder engagement to reach agreements on issues of concern, contributes to development of understanding and generation of strategies which are oriented towards reducing gaps between agencies and the communities at risk of flooding. However, it was found that none of the agencies practiced ‘communicative action’. It was also found that Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action has limited applicability for addressing flood risk communication, principally pertaining to its inability to fulfil the subtask of flood warning. Other limitation of the theory relates to inability of the theory to account for the need for ‘audience segmenting’ for flood warning to ensure reach to all members of the communities who may belong to different segments, such as, based on age, language and disabilities. The principal limitation of this theory, which is related to the subtask of flood warning, was found to be similar to the limitation of the Media Synchronicity Theory. It was found that Media Synchronicity Theory, in its current form, has only partial or limited applicability in informing media selection for flood risk communication, especially flood warning. It was also found that it relies only on capability of media and fails to account for the factors influencing media preference and choice of institutions and communities. Based on the findings of the research, the thesis makes many recommendations to the agencies and Scottish Government for changes in flood risk communication policies and strategies, specifically aimed at improving flood risk communication in Scotland. Among these are an amendment to The Flood Risk Management (Scotland) Act 2009 to include a requirement to hold dialogue with communities, to review and monitor communication activities of the agencies and empower agencies by capacity building. Other policy recommendations relate to development of agency-specific flood risk communication strategies, building up of trust, emphasis on raising awareness, and most importantly, tailoring of messages for media and audience and usage of the most appropriate media.

Flooding in the UK is one of the mostly costly natural hazards. Reliable estimation of flood risk is becoming increasingly relevant to flood management practices as the insurance industry, planning decisions and allocation of flood resources are encouraged to move towards a fully risk-based methodology. This thesis describes the implementation of a flood modelling chain to estimate the flood risk and quantify the associated uncertainty for the city of Carlisle, UK. Observational data from an extreme flood in January, 2005 is analysed to estimate its accuracy, then a method of reducing inconsistencies in the measurements is proposed. The observational dataset is used to condition a hydraulic flood model for the area. The potential benefit of implementing risk-based calibration schemes as an alternative to a global scheme that gives equal weight to all observations is investigated and found to be minimal in this instance. A flood frequency curve for peak flood discharges in Carlisle is derived using a Bayesian statistical model that combines estimates of historic floods with systematic river gauge data. The uncertainty in the resulting flood frequency curve reflects errors in estimates of peak flood discharge, changes in the channel and floodplain as well as the uncertainty arising from the limited length of the gauge data and compares favourably against the current ‘best practice’ methods. The flood frequency curve is used to drive the hydraulic model in a series of Monte Carlo simulations to give probabilistic maps of design floods for Carlisle. Spatial dependence between river flows and variability in flood hydrographs are incorporated in the Monte Carlos simulations. The uncertain consequences of the floods are examined in terms of financial risk, and risk to population and property. A social research project using semi-structured interviews attempts to establish the relevance of the results to urban planning, the insurance industry and flood management resource allocation. Discussion of uncertainty in flood risk in a broad context suggests a high level of awareness, but not prioritisation with no accepted standard of communication.

Widespread flooding throughout the island of Ireland during Winter 2015/2016 demonstrated the substantial financial and social consequences for communities, resulting in the temporary displacement of numerous residents and extended disruption to business trading. Following a flood event, a series of persistent problems often emerge, such as difficulties associated with renewing flood insurance policies. These persevering problems are secondary stressors, which are ongoing implications indirectly linked to a defined prior event, potentially contributing to psychological stress among affected individuals and hindering continuation of normal daily activities. As yet insubstantial quantification of flood-related secondary stressors has been conducted, hence it is challenging to establish where government resources are best employed. Furthermore, despite the existence of various studies examining the psychological health consequences of flooding on residents, limited research has assessed the implications for persons in charge of businesses. This research investigates the secondary stressors experienced by flood-affected residents and businesses within the island of Ireland, appraising the psychological health implications. Evaluation of preparedness and community resilience is undertaken, as well as consideration of the current effectiveness of flood-related social media communication by organisations in Northern Ireland. A mixed-method research design consisting of questionnaire surveys, interviews and social media data extraction was used to collect the empirical data. Qualitative data analysis was conducted using NVivo, whereas quantitative data analysis was undertaken using SPSS. Quantitative data analysis included the conduction of Principal Component Analysis and the calculation of Relative Importance Indices. A number of key findings emerged from the data analysis. Residents and persons in charge of businesses are affected by a wide range of secondary stressors, many of which have the potential to result in the development of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Nevertheless, business owners and managers are at a lower risk of developing PTSD in comparison to residents. Significantly, perception of future flood risk is low among residents and businesses and current flood warning mechanisms are insufficient, with the potential to intensify the impact of secondary stressors. Furthermore, the limited uptake of flood resilience and resistance measures and the inadequacy of community flood resilience within flood risk areas increases vulnerability to future flood events. Additionally, analysis concluded that the full potential of social media as a communication tool in relation to flooding is not being met in Northern Ireland. The findings have substantial implications for policy makers; prompting recommendations concerning development of specific flood guidance in Northern Ireland, official records detailing flood-affected businesses and clear guidelines for organisational use of social media in relation to flooding. Furthermore, practical recommendations are outlined including developing community consultation, increasing understanding of flood insurance policies, reviewing current post-flood financial assistance schemes, improving flood risk awareness and enhancing community resilience via social media.

This study explores the resilience and rapid recovery of Home-based Enterprises (HBEs) in a postearthquake situation. The study focuses on social assets, human capital and capabilities at both household and neighbourhood level. Despite extensive literature on post-disaster management and HBEs, this study is unique in examining the recovery of HBEs in a post-disaster situation. Based on the case of the 2006 post-earthquake situation in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, particularly in the Kasongan ceramic area, this research is designed to investigate how HBE households coped in the recovery situation in terms of social assets at the household and neighbourhood levels. Thus, the four aims of this study are, firstly, to assess the importance of the context in which resilience takes place, particularly as related to HBEs and Post-Disaster Responses, and, secondly, to examine the coping strategies of HBE households with reference to the dominant capitals of the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach. The third aim is to examine the key factors which emerged in the resilience of HBEs, and finally to examine the extension of the human capital concept in human assets based on capabilities. The Sustainable Livelihood Approach is used as an analytical framework to understand coping responses and the contributing capitals in the recovery situation. Qualitative and case study methods were employed, as the nature of the inquiry required a deep explanation. Based on multiple data sources, including 58 interviewees from HBE households in the Kasongan ceramic HBE area, this study used both primary and secondary data in an inductive, interpretative and iterative way. Resilience of HBEs is affected not only by networking, skill and education levels, but also local character, creativity and flexibility of households. The findings of this study not only support existing studies, particularly the importance of social capital in the post-disaster context, they also extend existing interpretations of the importance of people as the main factor in recovery. In accordance with the concept of human capability being more than the concept of human capital, this study looks at ‘social assets’, as these are rather more than ‘social capital’. Therefore, this study promotes the importance of social assets in addition to social capital, both at the household and neighbourhood levels. Another contribution is that it extends existing studies which until now have mostly been based on small enterprises in low-income households, to include middle and high profile HBEs as well as the networks and linkages between them.

The number of residential properties at risk from flooding is predicted to rise as a result of the impacts of both climate change and increasing urbanisation. The flooding of residential properties comes with various impacts ranging from significant financial costs to less tangible social impacts, which are often lasting and of greater concern to flood victims. At the same time, it is now clear that large scale flood defence schemes are not always favourable due to their high cost, and there is an increasing onus on property owners to protect their own properties. The research reported here therefore aimed to investigate public attitudes towards flooding and property level flood protection (PLFP), and their willingness to pay (WTP) for such measures to reduce their exposure to flooding. This research employs different methods. An extensive stakeholder consultation in the form of questionnaire survey and focus group activities were used to collect primary data on flood experience and PLFP. Financial analysis of varying packages of PLFP products was carried out to assess the cost and benefit of using resistance and resilience products. Finally, a consultation with institutional flood risk management (FRM) stakeholders was undertaken to help contribute to the evidence needed to improve the uptake of PLFP measures. The stakeholder survey finding has highlighted significant financial impacts of household level flooding similar to previous studies, and suggests that flood education campaigns have been effective in raising the awareness and uptake of PLFP products. Again the findings have shown that more people are willing to contribute towards the cost of protecting their properties in order to reduce flood impacts, which appears to be at odds with past studies. The mean total WTP was £795, and was strongly linked with a number of factors including the scale of flood impacts and household income. In addition, the benefit cost ratios (BCR) of various PLFP products indicate that such measures are generally cost beneficial, and the manual resistance products in particular have higher (BCR > 5) returns. Further analysis of models of incentivised PLFP scheme has demonstrated material benefit for both small scale and national level schemes, and signifies an opportunity to invest in a large scale PLFP projects. These findings are key and will provide valuable information needed to guide the development of strategies to encourage the uptake of PLFP products and improve community flood resilience.

This thesis contributes to the understanding of the potential socio- technical issues that can emerge from the interaction between dis­aster responder teams and automated planning support, which in turn, leads to design implications for dealing with the emerged issues. Recently, natural and man-made disasters in Haiti, Chile and Japan drew the attention of researchers of disaster management systems. A lot of efforts have been made to study the technologies that can assist human responders to improve their performance. In the Disaster Re­sponse domain, a Disaster Response team, which typically contains several incident commanders and field responders, are faced with the problem of carrying out geographically distributed tasks under spa­tial and temporal constraints in a quickly changing task environment. Recent advances in multi-agent technologies lead to the possibility of building planning support for team coordination by automating the task planning process. However, it is unknown how the planning sup­port system can fit into the team organisation in a way that improves rather than hinders the team performance. This PhD work adopts a serious mixed reality game approach as the vehicle to explore socio-technical issues in complex real world settings. We developed AtomicOrchid, an emergency response game to create a task setting which mirrors aspects of real world Disaster Response operation. In the game trials, participants are recruited to play as field responders and incident commanders to carry out res­cue missions. Participants' experiences are observed and recorded as they coordinate with each other to achieve game objectives, with the support from an intelligent planner agent. The observations gathered in three AtomicOrchid field trials reveal how the organisational work is organised with and without automated planning support; how the guidance from the planner supports/interrupts natural human work- flow; how the human mediation (between planner and responders) played out to support the team work for better or worse. In the first study, field responders and Headquarters (HQ) coordi­nate without support of the intelligent planner. The result showed the team planning is dominated by local coordination between field players in a "situated" manner. The HQ is observed to successfully provide situational awareness to the field teams through remote mes­sages. However, the HQ has little direct influence on the planning and actions of field teams. In the second study, an automated planner was introduced to guide field responders directly without involvement of incident commanders. At its best, the agent is observed to take over routine planning activities while the humans focus on other is­sues such as finding teammates, targets and choosing the best routes. However, there also evidence showing the agent planning occasion­ally interrupts the workflow of the human team. In the third study, the system is modified to support incident commanders mediating task planning activities for field responders and the planning agent. We find that the human coordinator and automated planner agent can successfully work together in most cases, with human coordina­tors inspecting and 'correcting' the agent-proposed plans. However, occasional failures of planning are also observed. Through the three field studies, we find that highly automated planning can disrupt smooth human coordination potentially because it fails to consider the social cost of team and task allocation. There are evidences showing that human involvement in the planning loop can reduce the disruptions. However, in order to effectively involve human in the planning loop, a set of issues needs to be addressed, in­cluding: complacency effects; silent, missing or invisible information held by automated planner; and limited support for situated actions. The work also further generalises implications for interaction design, around the themes of balancing labour division, achieving common ground, facilitating accountability, and supporting situated actions.