Flood hazard assessment and the role of citizen science

Abstract

Flood hazard assessment is at the core of flood risk management. In order to develop an efficient flood hazard assessment, it is of primary importance to have a well‐defined flood scenario encompassing all processes that could occur during an event. Understanding and assessing these processes requires meteorological, topographical and land‐use data as well as historical observations. Nowadays, flood delineation is based upon hydrological and hydraulic modelling, ground data collection, and remote sensing. Despite the advantages of these tools, they also present some specific limitations, either intrinsic to the approaches or linked with constraints of the local context. With the rapid advancement of web 2.0 technologies (e.g., Flickr and Wikimapia) and the increase of the use of participatory research, citizen science has the potential to provide valuable and complementary information at all levels of flood risk management and in particular for flood hazard assessment. After reviewing the capabilities and limitations of the current tools used in flood hazard assessment, this paper demonstrates the role that citizen science can play in providing key information on factors leading to flooding and on flood hazard parameters.

Urban Living Labs and Citizen Science: From Innovation and Science towards Policy Impacts

“…In the case of flood risk management, which is the particular focus of this article, the European Flood Directive 2007/60/EC requires public participation mechanisms to ensure citizens' involvement in decision-making processes. Through CS, citizens can contribute to mapping and assessing flood hazards at various temporal and spatial scales, which in turn can help to improve prediction models [59]. However, the implementation of a CS approach in ULLs is relatively new, and often results in little synergy due to a lack of interoperability and reusability of data and services developed in each project [60].…”

Mitigating flood risk using low‐cost sensors and citizen science: A proof‐of‐concept study from western Nepal

“…In disaster risk reduction, the role of civil society is immense, although relevant government agencies usually have overall responsibility to enact disaster risk reduction strategies (UNISDR, 2015). In this process, CS plays an important complementary role, particularly in data collection and the provision of new perspectives into flood risk assessment (Sy, Frischknecht, Dao, Consuegra, & Giuliani, 2018). CS‐based data cogeneration can be broadly divided into two types of approach: “user‐centric,” where users collect data and information on the spot; and “device‐centric,” where sensor sampling occurs whenever the state of the monitoring device matches the specific monitoring requirements (Palacin‐Silva et al, 2016).…”

Citizens AND HYdrology (CANDHY): conceptualizing a transdisciplinary framework for citizen science addressing hydrological challenges

“…For example, different scales apply to participatory projects aiming to manage extreme events, that usually require high frequency and low data latency (i.e. real-time conditions), like in disaster risk management and emergency response (Eilander et al, 2016, Ernst et al, 2017, Sy et al, 2019. This last example contrasts with urban and regional monitoring activities that are characterized by low frequency and long term response times (Albano et al, 2015, Lisjak et al, 2017.…”