Flood Awareness Centre helps Hull residents get ‘flood-ready’

The initiative is led by the Energy and Environment Institute’s Dr Steven Forrest and Living with Water Community Coordinator, Lauren Murtagh. It includes displays, workshops, activities and opportunities for residents to discuss their own flooding experiences and measures that can be taken to mitigate future flooding and aid recovery.

Dr Forrest said: "The Flood Awareness Centre is all about trying to help residents in Hull become more flood-ready.

Dr Forrest continued, "We're keen to talk to residents, to answer their questions, discuss floods and flood resilience measures, and provide support. We're ideally placed to do this through our floods expertise, and have students from our MSc in Flood Risk Management supporting the Flood Awareness Centre.

"Being in the city centre will hopefully engage different voices in this urgent and societally-important conversation on flooding and how we can become flood resilient."

Lauren Murtagh, Living With Water community co-ordinator at Hull City Council, said: “As Hull is second only to London in terms of flood risk, this centre is more vital than ever.

"It will provide an opportunity for residents to learn how to prepare for and mitigate the impacts of flooding in a changing climate."

Students from our MSc Flood Risk Management programme will be involved to gain practical experiences of discussing flooding with communities, as will volunteers from the Living with Water Community Ambassador scheme.

Postdoctoral Researcher Associate in environmental humanities, Dr Katerina Velentza, Postdoctoral Researcher Associate in environmental and spatial histories, Dr Hannah Worthen, MFRG Project Delivery Officer, Ejuma Amen-Thompson and PhD researcher, Blessing Mucherera, are supporting the centre by leading interactive workshops to support these important discussions. Hull City Council, the RPSCA, FloodRe and Hull’s Butterfly City will also add to the programme of hands-on activities.

The Flood Awareness Centre will be open to the public from 10am-4pm from Monday 25 to Friday 29 November and from 10am-2pm on Saturday 30 November at 23 Paragon Street, Hull HU1 3NA.

Drop-in or book on a free workshop, including games, and chat through our Eventbrite page.