Environmental Agency

Background

Modernising critical flood warnings

In a world where extreme weather events are becoming more frequent, governments must implement a robust communications infrastructure to warn citizens about forthcoming hazards. That's why the UK government first invested in a flood warning system back in 2006, however, in the years since, the technology has become outdated.

"We wanted to improve the service and make it more cost-effective by moving it from dedicated hardware to the cloud – a more flexible, portable and resilient approach," explains Simon Nebesnuick, Flood Warning System Product Manager, Environment Agency. "We also wanted to simplify the service and remove little-used elements, such as fax and pager support."

A further objective was to align two disparate systems - developed by JBA and Shoothill - under the same banner as the main flood warning platform.
Moreover, the Environment Agency wanted to become more agile by moving from a ‘single annual release' model to one that sees several smaller releases per year. A government tender outlining these objectives was issued and the respondents were whittled down to three.

"Fujitsu was the clear leader - not only was it responsible for the design and maintenance of the original flood warning system, it could also provide the fully featured platform we need," adds Nebesnuick.
"Fujitsu also demonstrated it could integrate the flood warning system with JBA, a flood management consultant and Shoothill, which provides Facebook warnings."

Outcome and next step

Faster, multi-channel alerts save lives

Fujitsu's Flood Warning System enables the Environment Agency to alert citizens much more quickly about potential threats, while automatically targeting multiple at-risk groups via familiar channels, which, ultimately, will save lives.

However, Fujitsu has also added value beyond this crucial objective, helping the Environment Agency align itself more closely with wider government initiatives. Supporting their ambition to be to the world's most advanced alerting system, the Environment Agency participated in Fujitsu's co-creation programme using the FUJITSU Digital Transformation Center (DTC) to refine their future strategy and align it to government digital standards.

"We spent two days at the DTC with users, managers, support teams and policy people in an effort to clarify our roadmap and service vision," comments Nebesnuick. "This allowed us to review our internal approach in the wider context of government policy, enabling the development of the plan that will ensure we continue to comply with the Government Digital Service Standard."

Another area where Fujitsu proved invaluable was in managing the relationships with mobile operators, who provide anonymous telephone numbers for unregistered properties. The Fujitsu-designed system is built to integrate with mobile operators, making it simple and secure to onboard them. Without their input, the flood warning service would be much less useful or wide reaching.

"Fujitsu have made sure the system works in a transparent and reliable fashion with monthly reports and 99.999% SLA uptime," concludes Nebesnuick. "It is a professional, collaborative partnership that enables us to solve problems quickly and deliver results."