Each year, thousands of local residents and visitors live, work and visit the Lincolnshire Coast. With a third of the county lying below sea level, the coastline faces an increased risk of flooding, increasing the importance to maintain coastal defences and prepare communities for future changes.
For the Environment Agency, delivering vital education, information and guidance across a 38km stretch of coastline means reaching far more than permanent residents. Without a scalable digital solution, significant time and resources were previously required, and engagement was far more challenging to deliver all-year round.
Whilst traditional engagement methods like community events and newsletters remain important, they cannot provide information to everyone, at any time. With scalable flood engagement, organisations like the Environment Agency have an instant way to answer questions, share flood resilience advice and encourage practical actions such as signing up for flood warnings - without requiring staff to be physically present.
AI-powered engagement also creates an opportunity to understand what people already know about topics like flood risk and coastal defences. Two-way conversations provide valuable insight into public awareness and the questions people are asking, helping inform future communication, engagement and coastal management work.
Hello Environment is an AI-powered Digital Team Member created by Hello Lamp Post for the Environment Agency. Acting as a ‘Digital Assistant’ for flood resiliency, it allows the public to access relevant location-specific environmental information, and instantly sign up for future flood warnings.
Phase 1: Using an AI-powered Digital Team Member, residents and visitors are invited to chat in a two-way digital conversation via QR-enabled signage. Using their mobile phone, the public can access real time updates on flood defences & ongoing improvements, and learn about the actions they can take to help against future flood-related events.
Phase 2: As part of the project’s expansion, residents and visitors could learn more about coastal dunes, including how managed dunes provide a natural buffer against extreme weather events such as waves and storms, as well as the protected species that inhabit these environments.
Phase 3: In the latest phase, visitors are now able to contribute valuable observations of the beach by sharing photographs to contribute to citizen science beach monitoring, enabling the Environment Agency to have improved visibility on the beaches water quality and usage.
With a Digital Team Member available on-location 24/7/365, the Environment Agency can provide relevant information continuously, without requiring staff to be physically present in every location. For staff, this proves valuable during the busiest times of the year, including at weekends and during the summer season when coastal visitor numbers are high.
Beyond supporting day-to-day engagement, Hello EA is unlocking valuable, insightful data from the community. By asking questions like ‘Would you still visit the beach if there was no sand,’ Digital Team Members enable their team to truly understand the value of the coastline by capturing public perceptions all-year round, with all data accessible via a real-time dashboard.
Since initially launching the project in 2024, Hello Environment has so far achieved:
By interacting with residents and visitors, the Lincs Coast 2100+ Partnership team discovered that:
"It is impossible for us to have people on the ground 24-7.
Hello Environment enables us to have bespoke conversations with communities in periods like school holidays, evenings and weekends, even when our offices are not working."
Georgia Thompson, Communications & Engagement Senior Specialist, Lincs Coast 2100+ Partnership
Hello Environment’s AI-powered Digital Team Members help communities understand flood risk, engage with flood defence projects, and access information to help them prepare for flooding.
Digital Team Members are bringing the Boston Barrier to life through interactive digital engagement to keep communities informed, prepared and connected to local defences when flood risks arise.
