A national assessment of natural flood management and its contribution to fluvial flood risk reduction

This paper provides credible quantified flood risk reduction evidence for natural flood management (NFM), in addition to acknowledging further un-quantified benefits for biodiversity, carbon sequestration, well-being and many others. The method used integrates national-scale hydrological models and fluvial flood risk analysis to quantify the flood risk reduction benefits of NFM across Great Britain under conditions of future climate and socio-economic change.

The results show that NFM has the potential to make a significant contribution to national flood risk reduction when implemented as part of a portfolio of measures. An optimisation through to 2100 suggests investment in NFM achieves a benefit-to-cost ratio of ~3 to 5 (based on the reduction in expected annual damage to residential properties alone). By the 2050s, this equates to an ~£80 m reduction in expected annual damage under a scenario of low population growth and a 2°C rise in global warming by 2100.