This online survey was undertaken between April and October 2013 and was targeted at flood risk managers, emergency officers and highways and drainage engineers from county and district authorities in England, who are the main users of the Flood Forecasting Centre’s (FFC) Surface Water Flood (SWF) warnings. It was distributed using SurveyMonkey®’s mailing system to a total of 490 recipients  drawn from a local authorities database owned by the Local Government Information Unit, as well as from the Emergency Planning Advisers Group of the Local Government Association.

The survey questionnaire comprised 16 questions split in three sections. The first section aimed at obtaining information about the respondent’s organisation and his/her role in it, and about the importance and characteristics of surface water flooding within their local area. The second section included questions designed to reveal the usefulness of the Extreme Rainfall Alerts (ERAs) and Surface Water Flood Risk Assessment (SWFRA) provided by the FFC as well as the respondents’ perception and understanding of these services. The third section was intended to assess the potential response of local authorities to more localised SWF warnings in a range of hypothetical scenarios characterised by different levels of certainty and lead times. In order to standardise responses, and given that it was an online survey, most questions had pre‑defined answer choices. However, respondents were allowed to include additional comments at each of the questions and many did so. In addition, to maximise the number of valid returns, most questions (except those in the first section) were made non-mandatory.

The cover email sent along with the survey, the survey questionnaire, as well as the survey raw answers can be downloaded from the links on the right hand side of the page. It is worth mentioning that, in order to protect the identity of the respondents, their IP addresses, email addresses and names have been removed from the raw responses file.

For more information on this survey please contact Susana Ochoa Rodriguez: s.ochoa-rodriguez@imperial.ac.uk