The focus of the review will be to assess how the country can be better protected from future flooding and increasingly extreme weather events, focusing on four key areas:
- Updating our climate modelling and stress-testing the nation’s resilience to flood risk;
- Assessing the resilience of our important infrastructure like electricity substations;
- Our temporary defences; and
- Our future investment strategy.
The call for evidence specifically focuses on the need to carry out a new assessment of the damage that extreme rainfall could cause across England. They want to understand the possible implications of extreme events and to review the current modelling assumptions.
The focus is on the impacts on populated areas including urban areas and crucial elements of infrastructure such as significant roads, bridges, energy infrastructure, water treatment plants, telecoms and hospitals, although the NFU is also interested in making submissions on the value and importance of agricultural land.
Evidence will be considered that has either been published in a peer-reviewed journal or evidence that has been published elsewhere following an independent review process.
The NFU will be making a full submission to the call for evidence. Defra’s deadline is 4 March 2016.