Current Issues in Early Warning and Development Initiatives Towards Enhanced Flood-Related Resilience in Nigeria

More than 4 years since the UNISDR Sendai framework replaced its predecessor, Hyogo, communities’ resilience to flooding is still a major issue for especially the developing countries (DCs) such as Nigeria where there are unresolved limitations with early warning systems. The recent increase in human and economic damages caused by floods and the inability of communities to recover from the effects, despite years after the disaster, indicate that the global concept of resilience has not been fully grasped. Nigeria, which is the subject of this chapter, typifies this situation. Evidently, the historic flooding of 2012 and its predecessors affected many communities and individual victims most of whom are still struggling with disaster recovery and reconstruction. This raises important research questions. What is not understood in the present context is that government institutions have made a lot of politicizing various interventions and local initiative, but the present reality is a “pathetic travesty of disaster recovery.” This chapter elucidates on these issues through theoretical discussions on community participation, risk-informed investment, and rural adaptation, all of which can be advocated to facilitate community resilience and coping capacity to all variants of flood hazards in Nigeria.

Challenges and Technical Advances in Flood Early Warning Systems (FEWSs)

Flood early warning systems (FEWSs)—one of the most common flood-impact mitigation measures—are currently in operation globally. The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) strongly advocates for an increase in their availability to reach the targets of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Comprehensive FEWS consists of four components, which includes (1) risk knowledge, (2) monitoring and forecasting, (3) warning, dissemination, and communication, and (4) response capabilities. Operational FEWSs have varying levels of complexity, depending on available data, adopted technology, and know-how. There are apparent differences in sophistication between FEWSs in developed countries that have the financial capabilities, technological infrastructure, and human resources and developing countries where FEWSs tend to be less advanced. Fortunately, recent advances in remote sensing, artificial intelligence (AI), information technologies, and social media are leading to significant changes in the mechanisms of FEWSs and provide the opportunity for all FEWSs to gain additional capability. These technologies are an opportunity for developing countries to overcome the technical limitations that FEWSs have faced so far. This chapter aims to discuss the challenges in FEWSs in brief and exposes technological advances and their benefits in flood forecasting and disaster mitigation.

Research on Power Grid Resilience and Power Supply Restoration during Disasters-A Review

Electric power system plays an indispensable role in modern society, which supplies the energy to residential, commercial, and industrial consumers. However, the high-impact and low-probability natural disasters (i.e., windstorm, typhoon, and flood) come more frequent because of the climate change in the recent years, which may sequentially cause devastating damages to the infrastructure of power systems. The aim of this paper is mainly to explore and review the resilience of power grid system during the disaster and the power supply management strategies to recover the power grid. Firstly, the category of natural disasters and different influences on power grid are discussed. Then, the definition of power grid resilience is explored and the supply management strategies copying with disasters are introduced, such as microgrids and distributed generation systems. Specially, the electric vehicles (EVs) equipped with large-capacity battery pack in the transportation network can also be considered as the distributed power sources with mobility. Thus, the conceptual frameworks of integrating large-scale EVs into the power grid to fasten restoration of the power systems in the pre-disaster/post-disaster are emphatically investigated in this paper. Finally, the opportunities and challenges in further research on employing EVs for emergency power supply in the extreme weather events are also discussed.

Keeping Feet Dry: Rotterdam’s Experience in Flood Risk and Resilience Building

Rotterdam City in the South of Holland is one of the most vibrant cities you will find in the Netherlands. The city has gone through a transformation from the time it was bombed in the 1940s up to the time that a part of the city was flooded in 1953. Through extensive rebuilding and the Delta Plan project, the city has been well protected against any flooding disaster that may come. However, how resilient really is Rotterdam? Through in-depth interviews of key stakeholders in the City of Rotterdam, the study investigates the collective engagement in the city and how this has helped shape Rotterdam’s position in urban resilience. The study used the Collective Engagement Urban Resilience Framework as a framework to understand how disaster prone cities transform itself to become disaster resilient.

Overcoming Barriers to Urban Flood Resilience: A Case of Hyderabad, India

Cities are increasingly faced with frequent floods disrupting everyday lives. Adapting to flood risks and conserving eco-sensitive sites are central to social ecological resilience. Rapidly expanding cities are found short of mitigating the adverse environmental impacts. For enhancing flood resilience, it is important to understand the interaction of the key stakeholders and its impact on governance and land use in the cities. Land use change in urban space is constantly influenced by negotiations among various interest groups. The urban governance structures are increasingly dominated by neoliberal approaches of profit maximization. Following a heuristic framework for policy analysis of land use change and governance, the present study assesses the barriers in building flood resilient cities. We apply the framework to Hyderabad city of Telangana, India, which has faced the recurring challenge of flooding. Results demonstrate the lack of urgency in implementing disaster management initiatives and contradictions in existing policies. This study points out the redundancy of elected municipal bodies for taking flood resilience measures, due to increasing proliferation of nondemocratic administrative bodies and underlines the need to bridge the gap through agendas cutting across sectors and institutions.

Move from Resilience Conceptualization to Resilience Enhancement

This chapter provides an analysis of various resilience definitions and depicts the differences in definition between engineering, ecological and socio-ecological resilience in an easy-to-understand graphic representation. It also articulates commons and differences between conventional flood risk management and resilience-based flood management and presents a mathematical formulation to facilitate resilience discussion. Furthermore, it highlights some studies and initiatives towards the operationalization of the resilience concept in flood disaster management practice. The most important message this chapter is intended to deliver is that resilience is not just about bouncing back. Indeed, it should be enhanced to bounce forward.

Fundamentals of Volunteered Geographic Information in Disaster Management Related to Floods

The main purpose of this chapter is to introduce fundamental knowledge regarding the notion of volunteered geographic information (VGI) and its applications in disaster management (DM) of events related to floods. Initially, the meaning of the term is defined along with certain properties and general trends that characterize VGI. A brief literature review unfolds the range of activities that compose that certain term, along with its applications to flood event management. Those applications cover significant aspects of both VGI and DM cycle: from participatory activities of volunteers up to pure data analysis, extracted from social media and other VGI sources, while, in terms of DM cycle, from mitigation up to response and recovery. Finally, a set of four main clusters of open challenges is addressed. Those clusters accumulate the vast majority of open topics on this research field.

Impact and Mitigation Strategies for Flash Floods Occurrence towards Vehicle Instabilities

This chapter presents a flood risk management system for vehicles at roadways, developed from extensive experimental and numerical studies on the impact of flash floods towards vehicle instabilities. The system, easily addressed as FLO-LOW, developed to contradict the assumptions that a vehicle would be able to protect the passengers from the flood impact. Herein the hydrodynamics of flows moving across these roads coupled with the conditions of a static car that would result in vehicle instabilities has been studied. In an attempt to prevent fatalities in commonly flooded areas, permanent structures are installed to warn users regarding water depth at the flooded areas. The existing flood monitoring system only focuses on water conditions in rivers or lake in order to determine risks associated with floods. Thus, there is a need for a better system to understand and quantify a mechanism to determine hydrodynamics instability of a vehicle in floodwaters. FLO-LOW enables the road users to input their vehicle information for a proper estimation of safety limits upon crossing the flood prone area. Preferably, the system enables road users to describe and quantify parameters that might cause their vehicles to become vulnerable to being washed away as they enter the flooded area.

Global and Regional Aspects for Genesis of Catastrophic Floods: The Problems of Forecasting and Estimation for Mass and Water Balance (Surface Water and Groundwater Contribution)

Traditionally torrential rains are considered to be the main factor of flood emergence. But with some examples of disastrous floods in absolutely different parts of the world, the rough estimation of the water balance results in the necessity to suggest a correct alternative hypothesis. Our simplest model (taking into account precipitation, evaporation, and soil permeability) clearly points out the significant discrepancy in several events between potentially accumulated and observed water masses. This observation puts forward the idea that precipitation is necessary, but it is not often a sufficient factor for disastrous flood emergence and for the water flow budget. Thus, another available water source, i.e., groundwater, should not be ignored. We consider the reasons and conditions for such phenomena. In this chapter, we will focus only on the causes and forecast of dangerous dynamic phenomena in rock masses. Of particular interest here are water flows through various granite massifs and geological rocks of magmatic origin using nonlinear dynamics approaches.

Enhancing the Community Resilience with a Network Structuring Model

Community resilience is a key index for describing the response of human habitat system against hazards. Enhancing the community resilience to flood disaster requires indicator identification and measurement system establishment, especially for flooding risk management. In this study, an advanced index framework for measuring community resilience to flood disaster is proposed integrating fuzzy Delphi method (FDM) and interpretative structural model (ISM). Based on the definition of community resilience, the indicators are classified into six dimensions, including environmental factors, social factors, economic factors, psychological factors, institutional factors, and information and communication factors. A simplified community resilience evaluation index system is established by using FDM, and the hierarchical network structure of the community resilience to flood disasters is confirmed, in which the direct influence indicators and the root influence indicators are analyzed. The proposed framework in this study contributes to the interdisciplinary understanding of community resilience to flooding disasters and building a more resilience community; it is also expected to be extended for risk reduction in other natural hazards.