TY  - JOUR
A1  - Kreibich, Heidi
A1  - Hudson, Paul
A1  - Merz, Bruno
T1  - Knowing what to do substantially improves the effectiveness of flood early warning
JF  - Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
N2  - Flood warning systems are longstanding success stories with respect to protecting human life, but monetary losses continue to grow. Knowledge on the effectiveness of flood early warning in reducing monetary losses is scarce, especially at the individual level. To gain more knowledge in this area, we analyze a dataset that is unique with respect to detailed information on warning reception and monetary losses at the property level and with respect to amount of data available. The dataset contains 4,468 loss cases from six flood events in Germany. These floods occurred between 2002 and 2013. The data from each event were collected by computer-aided telephone interviews in four surveys following a repeated cross-sectional design. We quantitatively reveal that flood early warning is only effective in reducing monetary losses when people know what to do when they receive the warning. We also show that particularly long-term preparedness is associated with people knowing what to do when they receive a warning. Thus, risk communication, training, and (financial) support for private preparedness are effective in mitigating flood losses in two ways: precautionary measures and more effective emergency responses.
KW  - adaptation
KW  - damage assessment
KW  - emergency preparedness
KW  - emergency
KW  - response
KW  - flood events
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-20-0262.1
SN  - 0003-0007
SN  - 1520-0477
VL  - 102
IS  - 7
SP  - E1450
EP  - E1463
PB  - American Meteorological Soc.
CY  - Boston
ER  -