Looking Back and Looking Forward (Again)

Abstract

For this editorial, journal colleagues suggested that I should reflect on my time with the Journal of Flood Risk Management, as my role as Editor in Chief of the Journal has now passed to Nigel Wright and David Proverbs.

I will start over 20 years ago by recalling that, as project Coordinator, at the first project team meeting of the EU funded FLOODsite¹ research consortium in 2004, I outlined my understanding that flood risk and its management is an entirely human problem. I wanted to emphasise to our team of European researchers who were drawn from many disciplines and backgrounds that the project was not to focus on my own area of expertise (computational modelling) but was to be fully interdisciplinary. I argued that flooding of land is a natural process whether it arises from rainfall, rivers or the sea. Risk, however, is human concept and flood risk arises when the natural process of inundation conflict with people, possessions and property in the path of water. Put simply, ‘no people then no risk!’

A critical challenge we acknowledged at the outset of the FLOODsite research was that there was a lack of a common understanding of the language used in flood risk management (Gouldby et al. 2009). Understanding of the same English word (e.g., vulnerability or risk) varied across the research disciplines involved and between researchers, practitioners, and the public. In addition, it was clear that colleagues from different national cultures often used English words slightly differently, particularly those who had learned English as a second language. We also recognized that approaches and priorities for flood risk management vary significantly depending upon national circumstances. When reading papers in the Journal of Flood Risk Management, it is important to recognize that there remains some difference in the usage of language; as editors we have not enforced standardised language.

My involvement with the Journal began during the course of the FLOODsite project; in the summer of 2006, I met representatives of Blackwell² during a series of meetings they held to discuss the need for an interdisciplinary journal on flooding. I recall that, at that time, I was concerned with the proliferation of peer-reviewed journals in general, leading to fragmentation of knowledge dissemination and possibly to poor standards of review and quality. Hence, I expressed that my preference was for encouraging publication in existing journals rather than founding another.

Naturally, I am pleased now that CIWEM and the publishers did not follow the route I suggested but went ahead with establishing the Journal of Flood Risk Management (JFRM) under the editorship of David Balmforth. An important difference from many other journals is that JFRM has always sought to publish papers derived from advances in flood risk management practice, rather than concentrating solely upon academic research.

The first Editorial Board meeting was in August 2007 with David Balmforth as Editor in Chief and Jochen Schanze from Germany, Jim Hall from the UK, and myself as the initial Associate Editors. We discussed seeking papers for the first issue planned in May 2008 and expanding the geographical spread of the board, which led to Kaoru Takara from Japan and Eve Gruntfest from the USA joining as Associate Editors in the subsequent months. The partners in the FLOODsite project also provided a ready network for finding reviewers and establishing the initial panel of editors.

David Balmforth retired as Editor in Chief of JFRM in December 2013 upon taking up his new responsibilities as the President of the Institution of Civil Engineers. During David's 6 years the Journal grew substantially in terms of reach and number of submissions. On David's suggestion, Wiley asked me to take on the role of Editor in Chief, and my employer, HR Wallingford, agreed to support me in this through the provision of office facilities. One piece of advice David gave to me was to read every paper before approving it for publication. Personally, I have found this beneficial in that it has broadened my appreciation and understanding of the range and complexity of issues involved in our profession.

Publication of papers was initially restricted by an annual page budget of 384, but as the number of papers offered for peer-review increased it became evident that this constraint needed to be lifted. First this was done by having some supplementary issues in the annual volume, however, some international authors misunderstood that the designation ‘supplementary’ meant that their contribution was of lesser quality or importance. This was an example of the ‘risk of language’, which had been identified as a barrier to common understanding in the FLOODsite project and which I discussed in an earlier editorial (Samuels 2019).

The most substantial change to the approach to publication came in 2019 when the journal moved to gold open access publication with no limit on the length of each issue. Open access content can be downloaded without charge from the journal website and, alongside the move to open access, Wiley made all papers previously published free to read. The most recent change has been made this year; starting with Issue 1 of Volume 18, all papers submitted to Special Issues will be assigned to the next quarterly Issue of JFRM as they are accepted from peer review, rather than waiting for all manuscripts to pass through peer review. The collation of the Special Issue will take place when the final paper is complete.

At the start of our tenth year of publication of JFRM the Board of Editors wrote the Editorial ‘Looking back and looking forward’ (Samuels et al. 2017) in which we confirmed a series of objectives for JFRM and gave a series of topics of current and potentially growing importance. Looking back to these now 8 years further on is instructive. The eight topics are all described quite broadly and in my view they remain valid today. However, I would pick out three topics which, although contained within the wording of that editorial, as being of particular current importance.

First of all, the most pressing problem I see in flood risk management is that of adapting to the effects of climate change on flood risk. Adaptation will need to respond to changes in the standard of protection offered by existing infrastructure and address any increase in its rate of deterioration. Physical defences already constructed can prove insufficient in the future climate, and processes during an extreme event may not have occurred for generations. As flooding becomes more frequent, more people are impacted directly and indirectly who have no previous experience or understanding of flooding and how to respond.

In recent years, the number of papers offered to the journal on aspects of climate change has continued to increase. Some respond to recent exceptional events whose frequency of occurrence has been attributed to changes in the climate, such as the extreme flooding in Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium in July 2021; the flooding in the Balkans and Libya from Storm Daniel in September 2023; and the flooding in Valencia in October 2024 (Amiri et al. 2025) and in Portugal in November 2024. Indeed, a Special Issue is in the late stages of completion on the extreme flooding in Europe in the summer of 2021, which collates observations and analysis across physical and social aspects of this event. Several of these papers are included in the current Issue of the Journal following the change in policy on the compilation of papers into published issues by Wiley.

The second priority I would identify is the need to promote resilience. Resilience has many facets. In the editorial at the start of Volume 10 we expressed the challenge as ‘understanding the factors that make people, communities and organisations resilient to floods’. However, the concept of resilience has other dimensions, particularly in the ecology of the terrestrial and marine environment. Resilience is an active area of practical exploration and development, for example in England the Environment Agency is about halfway through a 6-year, £150 million, programme of 25 demonstration projects that are exploring many facets of resilience and the translation of the knowledge gained into practical action. Further information on the Environment Agency Flood and Coastal Resilience Innovation Programme has been published at: https://engageenvironmentagency.uk.engagementhq.com/innovation-programme.

Although included as a part of the Environment Agency programme, the third priority I would emphasise is that of Natural Flood Management or, more broadly, Nature-Based Solutions. I have discussed briefly in a recent editorial (Samuels 2022); there I comment again on the need for common terminology in the area of Nature-Based Solutions and Natural Flood Management as we work in collaboration with several professional groups.

Finally, I would like to thank all the colleagues who have supported me in my time with the journal, particularly all who have worked alongside me as Associate Editors, together with those in the journal office at CIWEM and the supporting staff at Wiley.