Learn about ways to help your community be better prepared for flooding and recover quickly after flood emergencies.
Understand risk
The first step in helping your community prepare for emergencies is to understand the risks. Identify the hazards and impacts such as the sources of flooding, areas are at risk, how this will affect accessibility on roads or avenues of communication. Utilize Flood Factor’s Neighborhood/Municipality risk pages and contact your local officials and public servants for more tools and information.
Build strong ties
Get to know your neighborhood and the support networks within it. This can mean getting to know your neighbors, identifying vulnerable members of the community such as those with disabilities, children, the elderly and those with fewer resources. This can also mean connecting with local organizations, finding spaces where the community convenes to discuss local needs and concerns, or hosting your own meetings. By building ties before an emergency, you and your community can recover better after by relying on one another.
Know your community response plan
Hosting regular community meetings to discuss community response plans - Photo courtesy of IAP
In an emergency, it is important to have a plan for how to help each other. By identifying a low-risk area to meet and preparing community assets and resources like radios, phones, energy source, and rehearsing these plans - communities will be more successful in sharing information, coordinating action and communicating with one another and other organizations during an emergency.
Encourage local government
There are some things that individuals just can’t provide alone. Local governments can help reduce a community’s risk to flooding by investing in adaptation strategies. These can be physical barriers such as levees or seawalls, natural barriers such as wetlands or open spaces, or non-structural policy measures such as reducing development in flood prone areas. To learn more, visit our adaptation types article.