Appropriate technologies to reduce flood losses

This poster was presented by Practical Action at the American Geophysics Union 2018. Risk assessments and early warning systems are essential tools in the flood management cycle for saving lives and livelihoods. Here, Practical Action shares technologies and approaches that have been used in Nepal and Peru to help prepare, mitigate, and manage responses to disasters, including developing appropriate low-cost sensor technology for automated river level monitoring and warning, improving flood forecasting lead times using probabilistic models, digitally mapping exposed assets and populations for risk assessment, and co-developing standard operating procedures for early action and response to floods. In parallel with the physical science developments, an understanding of the socioeconomic context is needed to operationalize early warning and risk reduction effectively. They share insights from research into the gender dimension of flood early warning in existing systems in Peru and Nepal, particularly identifying the different needs, challenges, and opportunities for gender-responsive early warning systems, and sharing lessons of success (and failure) to ensure a truly gender-sensitive and gender-inclusive early warning system.