An examination of flood resilience in London Borough of Southwark

This paper examines the flooding resilience of the London Borough of Southwark, and the extent to which resilience concepts are incorporated into local flooding management practices. With climate change causing shifts in the global pattern of flood events combined with rapid urban population growth, the importance of cultivating urban resilience is widely recognized by researchers and practitioners alike. This study develops a Flood Resilience Index (FRI) inspired by the CORFU project, based on natural, physical, economic, social, and institutional attributes of the borough. Results derived from the FRI revealed that Southwark’s low levels of flooding resilience stem from a combination of natural vulnerabilities, compounded by urban challenges including housing poverty, lack of green space, and limited social capital. By locating the gaps in flood resilience and cross examining these gaps in light of Southwark Council’s flooding management strategy, this study contributes to the understanding of urban flood resilience and provides a framework for evaluating resilience in other urban areas.

Based on the FRI the London Borough of Southwark received a low indicative score of 2.6. Although the borough’s Local Flood Risk Management Strategy acknowledges the issues that impact flood resilience, such as residential overcrowding, housing affordability or development in flood-prone areas, it falls short of providing a comprehensive roadmap to addressing these challenges. The strategy also reflects a lack of capacity building capability to remediate these issues. Upon close examination and in conjunction with the findings presented by the FRI, it appears that the term ‘resilience’ here is more of a buzzword than a fully implemented concept (Davoudi and Porter, 2012). Its application appears to be confined to an engineering interpretation that prioritises physical infrastructure and technical solutions and fails to engage with the full scope of resilience thinking. In this context, the FRI is framed as a tool that can provide insights for devising flood management and resilience strategies by uncovering the drivers of vulnerability and resilience of an area.