Enhancing flash flood risk perception and awareness of mitigation actions through risk communication: A pre-post survey design

Abstract

Flood risk management is gradually shifting from a risk-based approach to an integrated one that, among other elements, considers risk communication (RC) as a means of boosting resilience. Regardless of the above, few scientists have tackled up to now the integration of RC into flood risk management. In this connection, this particular study seeks to check out the potential of a risk dialogue approach (based on an ad hoc RC strategy) to change attitudes and behaviours in relation to flash flood risk. Via a pre-post survey design, we evaluated risk perception and awareness regarding a Civil Protection Plan (CPP) implemented locally (i.e., in the municipality of Navaluenga, central Spain). For this particular objective, a questionnaire survey was created, and 201 adults (representing more than 10% of the population census) were interviewed twice in a one-year period. Before the second survey, an RC strategy was created. The RC strategy comprised briefings, quiz answers, storytelling, a contest of videos and photographs about past floods, and an intergenerational workshop. A t-test for paired sample analyses and a general linear model (GLM) repeated measures ANOVA were applied to identify changes in risk perception and awareness. Our results indicate that the RC strategy did increase flood risk perception in Navaluenga in the long term (lifetime). Also, it increased the level of awareness of the various features that comprise the CPP, enabling people to be more competent in facing a flash flood. Some cognitive biases detected in the perceptual process of human beings may shed some light on the results obtained. The implementation of well-thought-out RC strategies can play a role in improving resilience, particularly in geographic areas such as the Iberian Peninsula, in which climate change scenarios indicate a likely increase in the severity and frequency of flooding.