Flood warning & response improvements programme

The flood warning and response improvements programme was initiated in 2019 to address three key challenges:

• Limited alignment in response procedures across GW and WREMO. Current procedures are not aligned and do not support an effective, regionally consistent emergency response.
• Limited forecasting capability. GW has limited capability to provide flood warning across the region which will enable proactive emergency management.
• Low level of risk awareness within communities that have been identified as being at risk of flooding on what the risk is and how to respond. ​ 

The objectives of the improvements programme are to; ​ 

• Reduce the risk to life and damage to property from flooding through proactive emergency management.​ 
• Establish a clear, consistent, cross agency response procedure to prepare, respond and recovery from flood events. ​ 
• Establish a warning system that allows for proactive flood risk management by communities and emergency management.​
• Builds awareness in communities at risk of flooding to the risk they face and the actions they can take to protect themselves and their property. ​ 

This can be summarised as:

The right information to the right people, in the right way at the right time to allow the right action.

The programme consists of five workstreams; ​ 

• Flood awareness – Raise community awareness of the risk posed by flooding.​ 
• Flood warning – Improve Greater Wellington's flood warning capability​ 
• Flood response – Review, update and alignment flood response procedures across key agencies.​ 
• Flood recovery – Improve Greater Wellington's recovery processes and capability. ​ 
• Flood integration – Explore the connection between the Greater Wellington flood capability and CDEM Group. ​