Abstract

Floods are among disasters that cause widespread destruction to human lives, properties and the environment every year and occur at different places with varied scales across the globe. Flood disasters are caused by natural phenomena, but their occurrences and impacts have been intensified through human actions and inactions. The practice of flood disaster management have evolved over the years from traditional approaches of ad-hoc response measures to integrated approaches involving technologically advanced tools in flood disaster awareness, preparedness and response measures. This chapter proffers understanding into flood disaster awareness, preparedness and management, mitigation and adaptation strategies. Most importantly, the chapter presents a review on the relevance of modern technological tools namely Geographic Information System, Remote Sensing, Internet of Things and Big Data, that are available to flood managers, in the creation of efficient early warnings and Flood decision support systems that elevates the resilience of societies to flood disasters.

Highlights

  • Disasters can result from forces of nature which may be aided by human actions

  • Recent experience has shown that public awareness of natural hazards and disaster risk reduction education constitutes a foundation and pre-requisite for effective catastrophic risk management strategies at country and regional levels

  • Flood Disaster Management Strategies refer to a bundle of processes and activities that are aimed at reducing the overall impacts of floods on societies

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Summary

Introduction

Disasters can result from forces of nature which may be aided by human actions. Some disasters build up slowly while others may happen suddenly and unexpectedly. Like other disasters, do not qualify to be labelled ‘disasters’ by the mere virtue of their happenstances. They do become disasters when they cause damage or adverse effects to human lives, livelihoods and/or properties. Flash floods occur when water quickly sweeps over an area which is difficult to deal with and it is not easy to predict the amount of rain expected within the spatial area over a short period of time [2]. Regional floods occur when rain falls over a large area for days or weeks causing river levels to rise quickly and fall slowly usually inundating large areas and causing widespread economic losses [6]. Periodic flooding was essential to the development of some of the ancient civilizations especially those along the TigrisEuphrates rivers, the Nile river, Indus river among others [2]

Cause of floods
Impacts of flood disasters
Flood disaster risk awareness
Flood disaster preparedness and resilience strategies and practices
Flood disaster management strategies
Early warning systems
Flood disaster mitigation strategies
Flood disaster adaptation strategies
Monitoring, evaluation and mainstreaming of flood disaster management
Sustainable flood management
Technological advancements in flood disaster management
Remote sensing and geographic information systems in disaster management
Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data in flood disaster management
Findings
Conclusion
Full Text
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