Enhancing Community Resilience to Floods and Adapting to Extreme Weather Events with Data Driven Citizen Science
POLICY BRIEF
Climate change is exacerbating extreme flood events. Some neighborhoods are more at risk than others due to high levels of poverty, inadequate housing and location in flood prone areas. In addition data about the risks and impacts of flooding and other natural hazards are often missing from these neighborhoods. Co-creating data with vulnerable communities to predict when floods will occur can help to strengthen their resilience. Citizen engagement can address crucial data gaps improving early warning systems. It also promotes data literacy and enables communities to better understand risks and take action. This policy brief describes the Water Proofing Data project and makes the case for citizen science programmes as a tool for disaster risk reduction.
Download the policy brief here: WaterProofingDataBrief
Key Messages:
- We urgently need to create data about the risks of extreme weather events in vulnerable neighbourhoods.
- It is estimated that 1.81 billion people (23% of the world population) are directly exposed to significant flood risk. Community-based climate adaptation action could prevent deaths and reduce impacts these communities
- The benefits of better early-warning and effective community-based risk reduction programmes can also mitigate the significant economic impact of disasters
- Engaging citizens as knowledge co-producers can increase their awareness of flood risks and help disaster monitoring agencies to improve risk models.
- Engaging schools and local protection agencies in citizen science and community data generation can effectively contribute to equitable transformative adaptation and disaster risk reduction.
Wach video about this project here