Future Flood Warnings System (FFWS)

Our vision for a future flood warning system is customer and partner focused, providing direct alert messages that are targeted and relevant for the recipients. The warnings will be provided to people, not just for properties, increasing our reach to those on the move, transient groups and non-addressable infrastructure. The warning will provide contextual information, such as the historic/operational levels that have been reached and the expected impacts of flooding. The aim is to disseminate flood warnings across a broad range of channels and readily adopt future technology developments and emerging digital channels swiftly and at low cost. The warning system and associated delivery channels will need be intuitive and enable operators to issue messages efficiently, automatically generating additional contextual information, reports and relevant maps for those who want further detail. The system should be managed as a service, in-line with the Government's Digital by Default approach. The solution will facilitate monitoring of service usage and the introduction improvements on an ongoing basis. This could, for example be, new warning areas, implementing boundary changes or capture of additional contextual information. The service should be flexible and scalable enough to accommodate the provision of warning services for other sources of flooding such as surface water and reservoir inundation if policy change brings this into scope. This may also extend to allowing other Flood Risk Management Authorities to issue warnings for flood risks they are responsible for, such as surface water flooding, using this system. Data and information within the system should be readily accessible and detailed information should be made available to Environment Agency staff in order to manage, investigate and improve the service. The solution shall provide an appropriate service for our broad range of customers, from partners, media and public, who will be able to select, via self-service, how they wish to receive this information and most importantly when they wish to receive it through user-defined thresholds and periods. Adopting a common operating language will enable system-to-system interaction allowing others to consume our data and trigger further tertiary warning services. We aim to understand how recipients respond to our messages, whether they require follow up messages/further information.