Decision Making Framework and Tools

ESPACE and TE2100, Environment Agency

Climate Change

It is now expected that climate change will have a major effect on many sectors of our lives, including the economy, business and the environment. For example, flooding is expected to increase as scenarios of future climates suggest there is a good chance of increased mean sea levels or increased wave energy arriving at the coast. As well as these changes to average conditions it is expected that there will be increases in the occurrence of extreme conditions such as intense rainfall or tidal storm surges. Because of a lag in the climate system and no real slow down in emissions globally, it would seem that climate change is an extra risk for which business decision-makers, public agencies and governments will have to plan. This presents many issues for the Environment Agency in the UK when regulating and planning for water management. What can the Environment Agency do to minimise the impacts of climate change?

Recent research has shown that even if we mitigateagainst the problem by cutting greenhouse gases by half, the effects would still be with us for decades to come, some impacts such as rising sea levels will be effectively irreversible. Mitigation policies alone are, therefore, no longer going to protect us from the impacts of a changing climate — we need to combine this with some level of adaptation. Determining when and how to adapt our behaviour is an additional challenge for the Environment Agency, in the areas of water resources, water quality and flood risk management.

Spatial Planning

Decision-makers must consider climate risk along with all the other risks associated with spatial planning. It will be necessary for spatial planners to consider the following:

  • What are the climate risks that could affect planning decisions?
  • What adaptation measures are available or required?
  • When should adaptation measures be implemented?
  • What are the opportunities?

It is important to manage the consequences of climate events for the lifetime of the planning decisions and to avoid making decisions that will make it more difficult to cope with future climates.

TE2100 is an Environment Agency initiative and is planning for the future of flood risk management in the Thames Estuary. It is a partner within the ESPACE Interreg project. TE2100 is developing a method to test the sustainability of decisions given the long term impacts that climate change presents. Where there is uncertainty in our understanding of future flood risk, should we proceed with precaution and if so what should our precautionary adaptation or protection be?

Decision Making Framework

With these issues in mind TE2100, through the ESPACE project, is developing a step-by-step decision-making framework to test the ability for the decisions proposed by TE2100, and ultimately spatial planners in general, to provide sustainable solutions to climate risk and to manage water in the face of an uncertain future.

The guidance will help evaluate the significance of the climate risk, compared to the other risks that are faced, so that the most appropriate adaptation measures for sustainable water resource management can be found. It is proposed that this should be done within a risk methodology but combined with the Strategic Environmental Assessment guidance (SEA) to ensure that both society and the environment are central to the decision making process. The adopted decision-making framework is based on the guidance developed by UK Climate Impacts Programme in ‘Climate Adaptation: Risk and Uncertainty’, 2003, see figure 1.

The problem that TE2100 is addressing is one of ageing flood defences, rising sea levels and extremes, and a changing estuary with new development planned in the floodplain. Our objectives are set out by the Environment Agency’s responsibility to manage the Thames Estuary. The SEA will help the team develop decision-making criteria, by understanding the opportunities and constraints we face and the impact our decisions may have on society and the environment. These criteria will range from measuring scheme cost-benefits, to measures for habitat sensitivity and social vulnerability.

A full risk assessment will be performed to understand the hazards faced in the estuary both now and in the future. This in turn will help identify options that the TE2100 team could use to manage these risks. Any proposed options will be tested against the decision making criteria to develop the best and most robust plan for the next 100 years in terms of risk management, performance and value.

The SEA guidance will be used through all stages of the decision making framework to ensure that the TE2100 team considers every relevant issue in the estuary. This can only be achieved by working closely with the people who live and work in the estuary.

Figure 1. Decision making framework

Decision-Testing Tools

As well as developing a framework to help make decisions the TE2100 team through ESPACE are developing decision testing tools. These tools will help the team to efficiently examine large areas of the estuary in a detailed but clear way. For instance, the Modelling and Decision Simulation Framework, MDSF — a joint DEFRA/Environment Agency initiative, contains data on every property in the floodplain. TE2100 have used this tool to calculate the damages that would occur should there be a flood. This can be aggregated across the whole estuary to determine the benefits of one scheme over another through calculating damages avoided. The MDSF tool will help the TE2100 team to perform a risk assessment and is being applied to the Thames Estuary through this ESPACE work. A second tool ESPACE is developing is FloodRanger. This is a visualisation tool originated during the UK Government’s Foresight Flood project. TE2100 through ESPACE have developed this further to illustrate the problems and options faced in the Thames Estuary in the next 100 years to our stakeholders. Stakeholder engagement is important for the TE2100 project as future flood risk options can only succeed if they are widely supported by those who live and work in the Thames Estuary.