Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

Public Awareness of Flood Risk: the Role of the Environment Agency Flood Map, 2006-2007 aims to investigate how ‘official’ information translates into public understanding and action, using the example of the Environment Agency's (EA) flood map web site. The study has two different elements; a web survey and flood map experiments. The web survey was delivered on-line from the EA servers, with a portal on the flood map site. Users of the EA web page were asked to complete the survey which resulted in 1,395 valid responses. Questions were asked about the EA website and in particular the flood map. The flood map experiments were in-depth interviews with 51 respondents from specially selected case study areas which had different degrees of flood experience. Individuals were asked to work through online flood map material and their responses to specific questions were recorded. The case study areas where: Brockenhurst, Hampshire (9 participants - inland river flooding/moderate risk); Hambeldon, Hampshire (11 participants – recent groundwater flooding/high risk), Carlisle, Cumbria (13 participants – recent inland river flooding/high risk), and a control population of university environmental management students representing highly informed users with low current risk - Portsmouth University (18 participants). Further information is available from the ESRC award web page.

Main Topics:

Web survey: provides an assessment of user experience of the flood information service, and profile of the user community. Flood map experiments: provides in-depth understanding of individual user experience of the flood map looking particularly at preferences regarding the search for flood risk information and information format, base mapping (scale, style, navigation etc) and presentation mode (colour, transparency, interactivity etc).

Purposive selection/case studies

Volunteer sample

Face-to-face interview

Web-based self-completion