A Community-Scale Framework for Evaluating Flood Resilience Across Socially Diverse Communities

Climate change and rapid urbanization have increased the risk of flooding in many parts of the world and consequently, flooding has become the most frequent natural disaster with major impacts on communities, causing physical and intangible damages. As the risk of flooding continues to increase, integrated approaches to Flood Risk Management (FRM) have emerged placing greater emphasis on routes to adaptation and resilience. Community flood resilience is a multidimensional concept which focuses on keeping communities functioning before, during, and after the occurrence of flood events. Despite many attempts to quantify community flood resilience, there lacks a consensus among researchers and professional stakeholders due to diverse perspectives and cultural considerations.

This research presents a critical review of the existing literature on community flood resilience, through a synthesis of previous studies, to present the case for a new community-scale framework for quantifying and evaluating flood resilience. This framework is designed to help multisectoral stakeholders including local authorities, flood risk managers, engineers, surveyors, and property owners to make more informed decisions on how to improve the resilience of their communities to the risk of flooding. Significantly, this new practicable framework argues the need for a deeper understanding of the role of social considerations in overall community flood resilience thereby enabling cross-comparisons across socially diverse communities.