Reconciling place attachment with catchment-based flood risk management: What can we learn from film?

Abstract

A catchment-based approach to flood risk management (FRM) is gaining prominence in the United Kingdom. It is undertaken with wider awareness of multiple stakeholders, as part of a catchment scale understanding, and, as with other approaches, can visually re-shape place. Land cover and land management change at this scale also has the potential to reconfigure landscape values and place attachment. Researchers have used qualitative, quantitative, and mapping approaches to understand place attachment. Here we explore secondary data, specifically, we transcribe and code the stories of five Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire residents from the short film, Calder about the December 26, 2015 floods. We find place attachment, identity, and social capital are interconnected and feature strongly in the mitigation and prevention phase, post-disaster. Our findings suggest better understanding of place attachment can support a more catchment scale approach to FRM policy and practice.