ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the complex but pivotal role played by intermediaries in the ‘messy’ process of flood recovery. Central to our argument is the notion that flood risk management in the UK is a socio-technical system in transition. While policy is placing an increasing emphasis on the need to live with (rather than prevent) floods, there is very little understanding of how communities should actually go about doing this in practice. This is because, while emergency response procedures are well documented, there is a lack of clarity about how residents are to be helped and supported during the longer-term recovery process that follows, as people go about the difficult task of trying to get their lives and homes back on track. The result is a reshaping of the flood risk management system in ways that involve not only a shift from ‘hard’ to ‘soft’ engineering solutions, but also a reordering of social relations which reaches well beyond the immediate flooding event. Key to this reordering is a new role for intermediaries which emerge to deal with the challenges of flood recovery.
