Tuesday 5 August 2014

An unexpected role for the military

Retired military senior staff may not be the first  actor group that comes to mind when thinking of flood risk management. But recently, an interesting example was mentioned by the Environment Agency. In England, the Environment Agency assists communities in setting up local measures to enhance their capacity to deal with floods. For example, constructing a flood gate or raising a dike. The Environment Agency assists in the initial stage, to set up and plan construction the measures. After that, the community has to able to deal with activating the measure themselves in case of an actual flood risk. Also inspection and maintenance has to be done by the community themselves.


And this is where the retired military staff comes in. The Environment Agency indicated that former senior military staff have shown to play a successful role in local flood risk resilience. That is, because they are used to do regular thorough inspections and stay alert for events which may not happen often but which may have severe consequences, because they are trained taking the lead in a hectic complex situation, and because they accept leadership from other flood authorities, if these would come in and take over in a situation. Also, the Ministry of Defence appears to be interested in connecting their former staff to new functions and roles in society. So, retired military staff may not be the immediate group you would think of in flood risk management, but they could play a role; I wonder if that could also work out in other countries in a similar way as in England.