ACADEMICS are focusing on Tewkesbury as part of a major international project aimed at preparing for future flooding.

Some of the UK's top experts on extreme weather are gathering information from several hundred people in the town who were affected by the 2007 floods.

Their responses will form part of a huge bank of data being gathered from across the world as part of the MICRODIS project.

Researchers are interviewing people in Europe and Asia to get a better picture of how people have been affected by extreme weather events.

They expect the work, and the analysis of it, to go on for two years. They hope to come to conclusions that will help authorities here and abroad reduce the impact of future natural disasters.

The project, funded by the European Union, is looking at the integrated health, social and economic impact of extreme events.

Tewkesbury is one of only two places being looked at in the UK. The other has yet to be decided upon, but it is likely to be in the north of England.

Programme leader Dr Maureen Fordham, and her colleagues from Northumbria University, are now in Tewkesbury and will stay until next week.

She has a team of 13 researchers from seven different countries.

She said: "We've very grateful to everyone in Tewkesbury who has agreed to speak to us as we appreciate they have been inundated with various surveys about the floods.

"But this study is different. It is an international one and is comparing what's happening in Tewkesbury with what's happening in Europe and Asia."

Dr Fordham, who has worked in this field for 20 years, added: "It is a huge research project and Tewkesbury is in there and part of that."

The team is entering everyone surveyed in the town into a draw for a Marks & Spencer gift voucher as a thank you for their time.

It also plans to come back to Tewkesbury later this year to give people some feedback about the data that it obtained.