Cities resilience to flood risks communication: the B2CresCom scientific framework

Abstract

Climate change, particularly the increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, poses multiple and significant threats to cities. In fragile urban contexts, these extreme weather events could have significant direct and indirect impacts on economic sector, basic social services sector, infrastructure sector, natural environment and on development dynamics. The main response of cities to climate change impacts is the development and implementation of urban resilience policies. To produce the expected situations of resilience to climate change, these resilience policies should be inclusive, participatory and stimulate the commitment, mobilization, participation and contribution of urban populations. Communication is the main lever to mark urban resilience policies and stimulate the commitment of populations for their success. For many urban contexts, scientific knowledge, methodologies and decision-making tools to develop efficient cities resilience communication plans are still to be established.In this article we propose The B2CresCom scientific framework (Bayili&Badolo ClimateResilienceCommunication), a tool for the development of relevant, efficient and effective cities resilience to floods risks communication plans. It includes some innovations that are essentially methodological tools, information families and decision support tools for the communication plans messages, target groups, channels and for the integration of contextual and target groups specificities in communication actions. Communication plans developed by implementing the B2CresCom scientific framework are indicated communication plans to encourage the commitment, mobilization, participation and contribution of urban populations to cities resilience to flood risks. Basically, the B2CresCom scientific framework communication is a scientific tool to improve the relevance, efficiency and performance of cities resilience to disaster risks communication actions.