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The Foresight Future Flooding report

How will climate change affect us in 30 to 100 years time? How much will flooding increase? And how should we prepare?

These and many other questions were tackled in the Foresight Future Flooding report released April 2004 by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).

Led by the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King, with a team of 60 top scientists, the report was and still is the most wide-ranging analysis of the future flood risks for the UK. It predicted that climate change will be an important factor in increasing flood risk, and that both the number of people in danger from flooding and the costs of damage from floods will significantly rise.

It used scenarios of potential social and economic changes and climate change to help us understand the risks of flooding in the future, and inform both public and Government bodies on what will need to be done to meet these risks.

The Foresight Future Flooding report was updated in Summer 2008 to account of new information on climate change, and the improved understanding of flood risk more generally.  This was published as part of the Pitt Review, 2008. 

A summary of the main findings of the Foresight report, the Foresight update, 2008, and the important lessons to learn from them.
The Foresight report has informed our work on flood and coastal risk management.  We have also extended some of the analysis such as for the Long-term investment strategy. 

How our work has developed since Foresight was published and a summary of our work to adapt to the future risks from climate change. 

The Foresight Future Flooding project

For the official report, click on the foresight website below:

Foresight Future Flooding Project was updated as part of the Pitt report:

This report provides us with more up to date information on the predicted changes to flood risks into the future and comment on the potential solutions. A summary of these can be found on: