Could AI help councils protect against floods?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly becoming part of everyday life - from recruitment, to personalising social media feeds, to paving the way for medical breakthroughs.

Northumberland County Council is testing how AI can support "faster and better" planning decisions related to flood risk, in hopes of rolling out its findings across the country.

While planning officers review applications as normal, AI will be used in parallel this year to see if it finds issues faster, or if it could help make writing applications easier.

The council said it was a "really exciting" project, but stressed: "Every decision will continue to be overseen by human experts."

Developers hoping to build on a site need to submit an application, including a flood risk assessment, to the local council.

Planning officers then review it, checking for things such as surface water flood risk, and make comments - a process Northumberland County Council is hoping to streamline with AI.

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Nick Watson, flood and coastal erosion risk management manager, said the council reviewed thousands of planning applications each year.

"While these assessments are vital for protecting communities, they can be complex and time-consuming to produce and review."

He said there was an issue with the consistency of what was submitted.

"This will be a way to help overcome that, in that it'll be able to extract key bits of documents.

"We hope that it'll be able to review what's been submitted, check that against the massive amount of planning policy that's out there and flag up issues."

The information would then be reviewed by officers, he said, adding: "AI will not be making any decisions."

Mr Watson said the research had the "potential to really make our team's life easier."

"It's innovation," he said.

He said Northumberland was best-placed to carry out the research as the region was "at the forefront of AI at the moment".

A £10bn AI and cloud computing data centre in Blyth has been given the go-ahead, and the local authority is already part of a project using AI to predict flash floods.

The region has seen homes and businesses flooded in recent years, including during Storm Desmond in 2015.

The planning trial is due finish in September, and the council said it intended to deliver its findings by the end of the year.

Developers would not see a difference in the meantime as the trial would take place in the background, it said.

The council said: "The aim is to develop a practical governance framework for using AI responsibly in reviewing flood risk assessments, which will be shared with other authorities."

The Conservative-led council was given £725,000 by the government's Regulatory Innovation Office for the research.

Minister Baroness Lloyd of Effra said it was "cutting unnecessary red tape" so councils could reduce delays.

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