内容摘要：Like the padlocks left on the Pont des Arts bridge in Paris, people often leave the coins behind for love or luck.

Like the padlocks left on the Pont des Arts bridge in Paris, people often leave the coins behind for love or luck.

As for Ms Sneddon, following her personal experience, she now works for flood risk company The FPS Group."Flood risk is only going to get worse over the coming years so it is essential to find out as much as you can about the flood risk to a property," she advises.

"Flooding has a huge impact on communities and mental health. You are supposed to feel safe in your home, it shouldn't be a place of worry and anxiety."Wearing a laboratory coat and thin silver gloves, production specialist Jose Barrientos is painstakingly piecing together a white-framed goggle-like headset.It includes multiple cameras, eye-tracking technologies and electronics that work together to simulate scenarios from high stakes military operations.

"Everything has to be perfect," says the production specialist. "So many different things can affect other things that can affect the final product in such a massive, massive way."Mr Barrientos works for Varjo, one of a growing number of companies in Finland developing innovations that can assist military forces and governments in preparing for or reacting to conflict.

The Nordic nation, with a population of just five million, has 368 defence tech companies, according to research for Tesi, a state-funded venture capital company,

Around 40% of these are start-ups and scale-ups, with many growing at rates of 30% to 40% if their tools are dual-use technologies that can also be used in other industries.Seasoned professionals who work hard to mitigate the worst of what nature throws at us.

But the longer-term strategies of defence, response and recovery will also need to function effectively; what we learn from flood events, whom we hold to account and where we spend the money to improve protection for communities.All this against a backdrop of tightening budgets.

Even the government's Environment Secretary Emma Hardy has described the state of the UK's flood defences asDespite resounding criticism from its political rivals Reform UK is arguing that its "simplified" approach will better serve the thousands of vulnerable residents, some of whom look nervously to the skies every time the clouds darken.