Enhancing flood resilience through improved risk communications

A framework of guiding recommendations for effective
pre-flood and flood warning communications derived
from the URFlood project (2nd ERA-Net CRUE Research
Funding Initiative) from extensive quantitative and qualitative
research in Finland, Ireland, Italy and Scotland is presented.
Eleven case studies in fluvial, pluvial, coastal, residual
and “new” flood risk locations were undertaken. The recommendations
were developed from questionnaire surveys
by exploring statistical correlations of actions and understandings
of individuals in flood risk situations to low, moderate
and high resilience groupings. Groupings were based
on a conceptual relationship of self-assessed levels of awareness,
preparedness and worry. Focus groups and structured
interviews were used to discuss barriers in flood communications,
explore implementation of the recommendations and
to rank the recommendations in order of perceived importance.
Results indicate that the information deficit model for
flood communications that relies on the provision of more
and better information to mitigate risk in flood-prone areas
is insufficient, and that the communications process is very
much multi-dimensional. The recommendations are aimed at
addressing this complexity and their careful implementation
is likely to improve the penetration of flood communications.
The recommendations are applicable to other risks and are
transferrable to jurisdictions beyond the project countries.