Behind the scenes at Blue Heart

It’s Flood Action Week – a great time to learn more about how to be better prepared, and what to do if you experience flooding. Find out more.

Although there hasn’t been a major flood incident for a number of years, we do experience very localised flooding (if you know, you know). Eastbourne and southern Wealden is actually at high risk – especially from extreme weather causing surface water flooding inland. The more we can understand what’s happening and be prepared, the less impact flooding will have in the future.

As well as signposting relevant information and advice, we thought Flood Action Week was a good opportunity to share what we’ve been doing behind the scenes to help reduce the impact of future flooding locally.

We are:

• Kicking off ‘Phase 2’ of our SuDS for Schools programme, working with 14 local schools to install sustainable drainage systems that will help protect the school and surrounding neighbours from surface water flooding
  
  
• Analysing data from 518 sensors around the area to better understand how water is moving and make informed decisions about how best to manage it (see the live data from our sensors here)
  
  
• Putting together our BeFloodWarned platform – a ‘one stop shop’ for residents to find out more information about weather warnings and flood risk in Eastbourne and southern Wealden, as well as general flood risk advice (going live very soon)
  
  
• Building a flood warning service that will use the sensor data and weather forecast to anticipate areas which may experience flooding – and alert subscribers (we’re testing it on our project partners at the moment to make sure it works properly before releasing it to the public)
  
  
• Working with local partners to highlight different aspects of water and flood risk through community events; offering support and training through our Community Menu
  
  
• Creating resources such as the Stronger Together card game and teaching resources to encourage self-led learning
  
  
• Sharing our learnings so that communities around the country can replicate the best bits of our work.