Strategies to Strengthen Stakeholder Engagement in the Implementation of Property Flood Resilience (PFR) within Commercial Properties

Prabhudevaiah, Nagashree (2026) Strategies to Strengthen Stakeholder Engagement in the Implementation of Property Flood Resilience (PFR) within Commercial Properties. Doctoral thesis, Birmingham City University.

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Abstract

Flooding remains one of the most persistent and disruptive environmental risks in the United Kingdom, with wide ranging economic, financial, and operational consequences. Commercial properties, which play a vital role in supporting the nation’s economy, are mainly exposed to these risks. Despite increasing emphasis on property flood resilience (PFR) in academic and policy regulations debates, PFR implementation in the commercial sector remains limited, fragmented, and often reactive. The majority of existing literature has focused on residential properties, often implicitly assuming the transferability of insights to commercial settings, despite the fundamentally different economic, organisational, and governance structures that characterise commercial properties. This has resulted in a critical and underexplored gap in understanding the socio-institutional complexities of commercial sector resilience, particularly in relation to how stakeholders’ interactions, roles, capabilities, and influence in PFR implementation in commercial properties.

A comprehensive review of the literature was conducted to examine existing approaches to stakeholder engagement in resilience and flood risk management. Building on this synthesis and informed by empirical insights, a conceptual framework was developed to capture the interrelationship between stakeholders’ roles and responsibilities in the PFR implementation. A qualitative research approach was adopted involving semi-structured interviews with a diverse range of stakeholders, including property owners, developers, surveyors, engineers, local authorities and built environment professionals. The data was analysed using thematic analysis to identify patterns relating to stakeholders’ understanding, perceptions of roles and responsibilities and awareness of PFR. The conceptual framework was subsequently validated through additional interviews with stakeholders on its relevance, applicability, and practical value.

The findings demonstrate that the implementation of PFR in commercial properties is constrained not only by financial and regulatory factors, but more fundamentally by fragmented stakeholder engagement processes. These include limited and inconsistent understanding of PFR, misaligned roles and responsibilities, weak communication structures and significant gaps in knowledge, education and PFR expertise. These challenges are interrelated and collectively contribute to reactive and fragmented resilience practices, limiting the effectiveness of current approaches. However, it also revealed opportunities for improvement through establishing cross-sectoral PFR stakeholder framework in practice, incentive for resilience investment through policy mechanisms, clear roles and responsibilities in resilience governance, integration of stakeholder engagement in the planning and regulatory processes, and promotion of training and capacity building across the sector. The validation results further confirm that these challenges are consistently experienced across stakeholder groups and highlight the need for a more structured and integrated approach to stakeholder engagement in practice.

The study contributes to academic knowledge by addressing the long-standing neglect of PFR in the commercial property sector and developing a new approach to commercial flood resilience that strengthens stakeholder engagement and collaboration. This addresses the limitation of the current practice by clarifying fragmented roles, encouraging long-term thinking, and promoting shared responsibilities among different stakeholders, while also highlighting the importance of policy support and financial mechanisms to encourage adoption. By explicitly linking empirical findings with framework development and validation, the research provides both analytical insight and a practical tool to support more coordinated, proactive, and effective implementation of PFR in commercial properties. Ultimately, the research underscores the importance of moving fragmented approaches to PFR towards integrated, stakeholder-driven strategies that ensure more sustainable and resilient urban futures.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Dates:	Date Event 28 April 2026 Accepted
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Property flood resilience, commercial properties PFR, Stakeholder engagement, UK flood resilience
Subjects:	CAH13 - architecture, building and planning > CAH13-01 - architecture, building and planning > CAH13-01-01 - architecture CAH13 - architecture, building and planning > CAH13-01 - architecture, building and planning > CAH13-01-02 - building CAH26 - geography, earth and environmental studies > CAH26-01 - geography, earth and environmental studies > CAH26-01-04 - environmental sciences
Divisions:	Architecture, Built Environment, Computing and Engineering > Architecture and Built Environment > Architecture Doctoral Research College > Doctoral Theses Collection
Depositing User:	Louise Muldowney
Date Deposited:	08 Jun 2026 09:49
Last Modified:	08 Jun 2026 09:49
URI:	https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/17071

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