This film examines typical responses to flooding, including examples of both 'hard' and 'soft' engineering techniques.
Video
In recent years, the United Kingdom has experienced serious flooding in many parts of the country. There are several steps we can take to prevent or reduce flooding, or at least to lessen its impact.
These steps can be classified into two groups: hard engineering and soft engineering.
Hard engineering is the construction or placement of physical barriers like embankments, walls, levees, dams, groynes and large rock boulders.
These can prevent the rising water from flooding onto the surrounding areas. But, these constructions are expensive and take time to implement. They can also be damaging to the natural environment, and sometimes they fail, like here in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Soft engineering works with the environment, using techniques that allow floodwater to interact with the land in a way that reduces pressure on the built environment and the local population.
This can include the creation of flood plains on land upstream from urban areas, to allow flooding to occur naturally with minimum damage to property.
On the shoreline, natural sand dunes can be encouraged to form on beaches. These absorb floodwater and the force of the waves.
Soft engineering strategies may cost less and be less destructive to the natural environment, but they often cannot offer the same level of protection from flooding that hard engineering techniques can.
It's usually a combination of hard and soft engineering strategies that is most effective in protecting humans, property and the environment from flooding.
However, even with several responses in place, flooding can occur, sometimes causing serious destruction and threat to human life.
Video summary
Download/print a transcript of the video.
A short film for secondary schools explaining the common responses to flooding and the methods employed to prevent and reduce flooding. Footage shows examples of hard and soft engineering techniques.
It considers a range of responses to flooding and gives students the opportunity to determine which they believe are most effective and why.
It meets the requirements of National Curriculum physical geography at KS3 with regard to:
- geological timescales and plate tectonics
- rocks, weathering and soils
- weather and climate, including the change in climate from the Ice Age to the present
- and glaciation, hydrology and coasts.
Teacher notes
Download/print the Teacher Notes for this episode (pdf).
Before watching the video
Recap with students why flooding happens and the different types of flooding, for example river and coastal flooding.
Ask students how we can minimise the impacts of flooding. What ideas can they come up with?
Introduce key terms such as:
Hard engineering: The construction of placement of physical barriers to manage that location.
Soft engineering: Working with the environment to manage flooding or erosion.
During the video
You may wish to stop at relevant points during this short film to pose questions and check understanding or wait until the end. Useful questions might include:
- What is hard engineering?
- Give examples of hard engineering strategies.
- What is soft engineering?
- Give examples of soft engineering strategies.
- Why is it useful to combine hard and soft engineering?
- Can flood management completely prevent flooding?
After watching
This short film is an ideal tool to help students understand how humans respond to flooding. Combined with these two earlier films on coastal flooding and river flooding, this brings together the responses to, and impacts of, both types of flooding.
Look at a range of coastal and river management strategies. Give students photographs of each and ask students to annotate them with how they work and the advantages and disadvantages of each method. Students could also rank the different methods in order of how well they work.
Flood management is often controversial, and there are a range of opinions on them. Whilst looking at the different photographs of each method, ask students why some people may disagree with them.
Where next?
Task students with creating a case study on either river or coastal flooding, for example they could look at the Boscastle floods or the 2013 coastal floods.
Students should investigate the cause of the flooding, the impacts and the responses.
Students and teachers over the age of 16 can create a free Financial Times account. For a Financial Times article about the Valencia floods from 2024, click here.
Curriculum notes
This short film is relevant for teaching geography at KS3 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and 3rd and 4th Level in Scotland.
This short film helps meet the requirement of the Key Stage 3 national curriculum in geography requirement to develop and understanding of:
- physical geography relating to: geological timescales and plate tectonics; rocks, weathering and soils; weather and climate, including the change in climate from the Ice Age to the present; and glaciation, hydrology and coasts.
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