Floods are becoming more frequent and severe due to climate change, yet many early warning systems (EWS) still fail the people who need them most. Top-down, government-run systems often struggle with sustainability and once funding ends, monitoring stops and systems fall apart. The communities living in flood-prone areas are the most vulnerable, but they are also the last to be consulted.
My poster will argue that actively involving communities in EWS from data collection to monitoring to disseminating warnings leads to better outcomes. A community-centred approach for early warning syster works better.
Using Nepal’s flood and GLOF context as a case, I want to explore: does community engagement make EWS more effective? And if so, how can we design systems that keep communities at the centre, not as passive receivers of warnings, but as active participants in producing them?
References:
Gautam, D. K., & Phaiju, A. G. (2013). Community based approach to flood early warning in West Rapti River Basin of Nepal. IDRiM Journal, 3(1).
Smith, P.J., Brown, S. & Dugar, S. (2017). Community-based early warning systems for flood risk mitigation in Nepal. Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 17, 423–437.
Bajracharya, S. R., Khanal, N. R., Nepal, P., Rai, S. K., Ghimire, P. K., & Pradhan, N. S. (2021). Community assessment of flood risks and early warning system in ratu watershed, Koshi basin, Nepal. Sustainability, 13(6), 3577.
Shrestha, A., McCrone, A., Láng-Ritter, J., Gautam, S., Taka, M., & Varis, O. (2025). Bridging gaps, saving lives: Integrating communities’ voices and impact mapping into flood early warning systems in rural Nepal. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 118, 105238.
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Really interesting idea! Having these communities help record/share information could also be a great way to know they have access to the EWS in the first place (as the notification can’t do much if no one is there to hear it). It would also be interesting to see if these communities have their own methods to predict floods and how that could also be included in the results. Last question is what is GLOF?
Yes, these communities have their own methods to predict the flood. There are some indigenous knowledge regarding the prediction/adaptation of floods. This paper here might be helpful to know more about it. https://doi.org/10.1108/DPM-04-2021-0136
And GLOF stands for Glacier Lake Outburst Flood.