OXFORDSHIRE County Council is hoping a 21st century solution has been found to the problem of flooding.

The council’s emergency planning unit is aiming to use social media such as Twitter as well as live flood maps and a system which warns schools and care homes when they are at risk.

A report by the council’s emergency planning officer will be considered by the safer and stronger communities scrutiny committee on Monday.

It says: “The weather events of 2012/13 provided an opportunity to improve usage of social media to provide information on disruption to the public.

“The speed of resources such as Twitter proved useful in increasing communication – not only to those people with accounts, but was used to inform media partners for onward communication via more traditional outlets such as radio.

“Web-based river levels and live flood warning maps provide a clear picture of how watercourses are responding to weather events.”

It goes on to say that the emergency planning unit is testing a new service offered by the Environment Agency to register key sites so that alerts are received if these are at risk.

The report will be discussed at the meeting on Monday at 10am in County Hall. It follows a spate of serious flooding problems in November and December.