“Are we talking just a bit of water out of bank? Or is it Armageddon?” Front line perspectives on transitioning to probabilistic fluvial flood forecasts in England

Abstract

By showing the uncertainty surrounding a prediction, probabilistic forecasts can give an earlier indication of potential upcoming floods, increasing the amount of time available to prepare. However, making a decision based on probabilistic information is challenging. As part of the UK-wide policy's move towards forecast-based flood risk management, the Environment Agency (EA), responsible for managing risks of flooding in England, is transitioning towards the use of probabilistic fluvial forecasts for flood early warning. While science and decision-making are both individually progressing, there is still a lack of an ideal framework for the incorporation of new and probabilistic science into decision-making practices, and, respectively, the uptake of decision-makers' perspectives in the design of scientific practice. To address this, interviews were carried out with EA decision-makers (i.e. Duty Officers), key players in the EA's flood warning decision-making process, to understand how they perceive this transition might impact on their decision-making. The interviews highlight the complex landscape in which EA Duty Officers operate and the breadth of factors that inform their decisions, in addition to the forecast. Although EA Duty Officers already account for uncertainty and communicate their confidence in the forecast they currently use, the interviews revealed a decision-making process which is still very binary and linear to an extent, which appears at odds with probabilistic forecasting. Based on the interview results, we make recommendations to support a successful transition to probabilistic forecasting for flood early warning in England. These recommendations include the new system's co-design together with Duty Officers, the preparation of clear guidelines on how probabilistic forecast should be used for decision-making in practice, EA communication with all players in the decision-making chain (internal and external) that this transition will become operational practice and the documentation of this transition to help other institutes yet to face a similar challenge. We believe that this paper is of wide interest for a range of sectors at the intersection between geoscience and society. A glossary of technical terms is highlighted by asterisks in the text and included in Appendix A.