Background
Since the summer floods of 2007, and following the Pitt Review — which recommended that the Environment Agency and the Met Office work more closely together — both organisations have been looking at further ways to combine their expertise to find a better means of providing the most complete picture of flood risk, from developing weather through to the actual flooding event itself.
The Flood Forecasting Centre (FFC) went live on 1 April 2009 and is fully operational 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with a team of highly skilled staff based in London.
Governance
The FFC is a partnership between the Environment Agency and the Met Office and has a Management Board, comprising both EA and MO Directors.
The FFC also has a Stakeholder User Group, comprising representatives from all our key UK-wide partners in government, business and the scientific community. The SUG provides valuable feedback to the Centre's management team to help shape our future direction.
What we've achieved since going live
Since going live on April 1, the FFC has routinely issued Daily Weather Forecasts and Flood Guidance Statements as well as a considerable number of Heavy Rainfall Warnings, Extreme Rainfall Alerts and Storm Tide Alerts.
In the first three months of operation we received more than 200 requests to sign-up for the daily Flood Guidance Statement and around 1000 registration applications for the Web Service.
The Centre has already been tested with severe weather on several occasions, highlighting where things are working as well as areas for improvement.
The team is committed to reporting, monitoring and evaluating these events to ensure we continue to develop and improve our services and products for our stakeholders.
What we aim to achieve in the future
Our team is dedicated to the delivery of ongoing improvements and enhanced capabilities of our services in both the short and long-term futures.
We have a Development Programme in place, aimed at identifying opportunities for the FFC to integrate with Environment Agency and Met Office programmes as well as to pull through existing scientific projects within the two organisations to accelerate their development and implementation for the benefit of our stakeholders.
Equally key to the long-term success of the Centre is our commitment to listening and learning from our customers, through ongoing communication and engagement.
By regularly gaining customer feedback, we can identify what needs to be done in order to continue to adapt and respond to their changing needs.
Importantly, we are also dedicated to proactively informing our customers about the services we deliver, ensuring they have a clear understanding of our products and how best to benefit from them.