Discuss advantages and disadvantages of soft engineering as a river flood management strategy.

Soft engineering encompasses techniques that involve working with, rather than controlling, the environment. Examples can include: forecasts, flood warning systems, land use management on floodplains, wetland/river bank conservation, and river restoration. It is considered a controversial strategy to dealing with river flood management as there are an array of both advantages and disadvantages. 

Advantages of soft enginnering as a river flood management strategy include its low cost nature, compared with hard engineering strategies that often involve more building materials and time to put into place. This subsequently means that they can be used in LEDCs that may lack the finance to be spent on river flood management. Also, they are generally considered to be low maintenance strategies. For example, once you have restored the river, you only have to monitor it rather than continually upgrade structures (dams, levees etc as with hard engineering strategies). Additionally, soft engineering strategies are far more environmentally friendly than hard enginerring strategies as they encourage people to work with the environment rather than agaisnt it and are subsequently seen to be more sustainable. However, there are disadvantages to using soft engineering as a river flood management strategy. The techniques are not necessarily reliable and may not always be effective so meaning that some floods do still occur and consequently people may lose possessions and businesses may be adversely affected. Also, it has a limited use as soft engineering cannot always be used in areas where the floodplains are already built-up. Finally, soft engineering may actually increase local flood risk since they often do not attempt to prevent major flooding, but rather only to reduce the impact of flood events.