Devon Resilience Innovation Project (DRIP)

Managing big problems in small places (rapid response ‘type’ catchments)

DCT is a partner in this project, responsible for stakeholder engagement and support. The project is led by Devon County Council and is made up of 25 individual projects across the county, reporting to the Environment Agency and DEFRA.

Project Summary

The project focuses on rapidly responding catchments in a predominantly rural area, whilst also making linkages between rural spaces and urban risks. This is a multi-partner project, building on many pre-existing initiatives across the project partnership.

The project overall seeks to identify a range of replicable low-cost resilience actions that can be delivered and funded by local authorities or/and local communities of different sizes/settings where traditional flood defences are shown not to be appropriate or cost beneficial. The project seeks to identify what level of protection can be afforded to a community using nature-based interventions, tailored flood warning systems and Property Flood Resilience measures.

The project will encourage local communities at risk to develop and deliver their own flood resilience interventions in collaboration with the project partners and identify wider benefits and alternative funding models which can then be used by other communities elsewhere. The project will also encourage local communities to participate in local monitoring to build trust and confidence in the resilience measures.

The project will expand on locally developed methods of quantifying community resilience levels and communities with the knowledge and tools they need to help themselves including baseline information, opportunity mapping in a central shared location through the production of a local Flood Resilience Hub.

The project will develop tools and guidance linking flood resilience measures to local spatial planning policy to protect further communities at risk from heightened run offs as a result of increased climate change risks, pressures from new developments and increased agricultural productivity.

More information about the Devon project will be made available through this webpage as the project progresses. Further information about the overall National Programme is available at: Flood and coastal resilience innovation programme – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

For more information, or if you'd like to get involved, please contact: Charlotte Squire on 07415 227479 or at charlotte.squire@devoncommunities.org.uk

engaging the community with Connecting the Culm

Project Partners

Devon County Council, Torbay Council, Plymouth City Council, Environment Agency, Mid Devon District Council, North Devon District Council, Torridge District Council, East Devon District Council, Exeter City Council, Teignbridge District Council, South West Water, Food Farming & Countryside Commission, Cabinet Office Geospatial Commission, Dartmoor National Park Authority, Exmoor National Park Authority, National Trust, Blackdown Hills AONB, North Devon Biosphere Reserve, Westcountry Rivers Trust, Devon Wildlife Trust, Devon Communities Together, Exeter University, Plymouth University