Flooding over the past 14 years has caused major disruption to towns and cities, schools, hospitals and care homes, a study reveals.
The analysis shows towns and cities have been hit by flash flooding 51 times. Fifteen hospitals and 68 schools have also suffered from rising flood waters, which have caused major disruption to patients and to children.
The analysis, carried out by the Conservative-leaning thinktank Bright Blue, says that with increased flooding due to the climate emergency, the government must do more to improve the resilience of communities, businesses, and other infrastructure.
Using a form of artificial intelligence called Natural Language Processing (NLP), the data was collected by analysing archives of thousands of local, regional and national newspapers.
Since 2007, according to the analysis, there have been at least 12 instances of flooded electricity substations, in at least one case leading to power cuts that were problematic for emergency response and community resilience, and at least five instances of damage to gas pipelines due to the bridges supporting them collapsing.
The report called for the government to support and fund an ongoing programme of research to identify and monitor risks associated with extreme rainfall in urban areas. It also said government should conduct a civil resilience exercise for an extreme rainfall event in a major UK urban area, incorporating significant infrastructure failure.
Ryan Shorthouse, the chief executive of Bright Blue, said: “Flooding is one of the most serious climate-related challenges that this country is facing and will continue to face as the climate changes further in the coming years.
“The impact of flooding is already being felt deeply in communities across the UK. The UK government can and must do much more to better improve the resilience of local communities, businesses, public services, and critical infrastructure to flooding.” (The Guardian)