Investigators: Paul Bates (Hydrology Group, Geographical Sciences), Jamie Evans (Personal Finance Research Centre, Geographical Sciences),  David Manley (Spatial Modelling Group, Geographical Sciences)

This project was funded by the Cabot Institute Innovation Fund to the value of £2421

Project descriptor:

Home insurance is often the last line of defence when flooding strikes, but many UK households – particularly those on lower incomes – remain uninsured. At present, there is limited understanding of why this is the case, who (and where) is most at-risk of being uninsured in the event of flooding, and how such households might cope financially should the worst happen.

This interdisciplinary project brings together hydrologists and social scientists from the School of Geographical Sciences to explore how we can better answer these questions using new data and analytical techniques.

We plan to produce a Feasibility Study that examines ways to merge the newly-available National Flood Risk Analysis dataset (which maps flood risk in England and Wales at 50m resolution) with in-depth socio-economic data about individuals and households to produce models of insurance uptake more sophisticated than those currently available. Census data, Indices of Multiple Deprivation and large-scale social surveys – such as Understanding Society, the Family Resources Survey, the Poverty and Social Exclusion Survey 2012 – all contain data which, if used in new and novel ways with flood risk maps, could contribute significantly to our understanding of this issue.

We plan to use the Feasibility Study as the basis for further funding applications to extend the work and implement the suggested analyses, most likely via the ESRC’s Secondary Data Analysis Initiative.