Move to safety - the role of human and technology factors in future flood warning systems

There is a pressing need for effective future systems to warn the public of an impending flood. A QinetiQ project adopted a socio-technical, total systems perspective, balancing the role of flood warning technology alongside the processes adopted together with human and organisational factors. Based on the needs of different alertee types, the effectiveness of current flood warning systems and potential future options was assessed. A low-cost, proof of concept prototype demonstrator was developed and lessons learned from human factors assessment are presented. Subsequent refinements to the proposed solution introduced a human intermediary role combined with the reliability of mature, multi-channel ICT technologies in a novel architectural arrangement. The project is seen as an example case study of the people-system symbiosis achievable by integrating from project lifecycle outset the potential ´push´ of innovative ICT systems, with the human requirements ´pull´ of real-world stakeholder communities.