A Socially and Behaviourally Grounded Framework for Inclusive Engagement Towards Community Flood Resilience

<p dir="ltr"><i>Without robust community engagement, flood resilience efforts often lack legitimacy, traction, and sustainability. However, many existing engagement frameworks—often designed outside the flood context—fail to reflect the lived realities of flood-affected communities, overlooking emotional and informal dynamics, assuming linearity, relying on civic access and rationality, and neglecting structural inequalities. Many of these frameworks adopt a deficit-based lens, framing communities primarily in terms of what they lack—be it knowledge, organisation, or capacity—rather than recognising their existing strengths.</i></p><p dir="ltr"><i>This study addresses these limitations by proposing a socially and behaviourally grounded framework for inclusive engagement in flood-affected communities. Drawing on academic, policy, and grey literature—particularly from flood resilience, disaster studies, behavioural science, planning theory, and community development—it engages key theoretical contributions related to assets, social capital, adaptive learning, emotional wellbeing, and community knowledge to identify persistent gaps around diversity, emotional readiness, leadership, informal behaviours, and lived experience.</i></p><p dir="ltr"><i>In contrast to deficit-based frameworks, the framework positions engagement as an iterative, asset-driven, and context-sensitive process rooted in trust and mutual accountability. Structured across three phases—Community Groundwork, Engagement, and Reflection—it foregrounds community strengths, trust-building, emotional connections, and local leadership. Its distinctiveness lies in how engagement is implemented: communities choose their own entry point; leadership emerges from within; trust—not templates—guides the process; external actors support rather than steer; and built-in reflection ensures learning and adaptation over time. Unlike existing frameworks, it integrates emotional and behavioural dynamics, begins before formal participation, and offers a replicable yet flexible structure applicable across diverse flood contexts. By embedding these dynamics, the framework offers policymakers, practitioners, and communities a more grounded, equitable, and sustainable approach to engagement in flood-affected settings.</i></p>