Dealing with citizen response and evacuation during large scale flooding in industrial societies

The challenges that large-scale floods pose are beyond the organisational capabilities of governments and the emergency services of most states to handle. More people experience flooding than any other natural hazard with on average nearly 97 million people affected annually between 1980 and 2008 [1]. While most of those affected are in the developing world, significant economic and infrastructural damage is also wrought by flood in modern industrial societies who share a long history of exposure to such risks [2]. Dealing with floods, therefore, calls for close cooperation between citizens, public bodies and private actors. The effectiveness of governmental response to flooding is even largely dependent on the rational complying citizen. Large-scale evacuations, for instance, can only succeed when citizens cooperate. This need for cooperation has important implications for the preparation and response to floods, especially since governments privatise and subcontract formerly state-provided services [3]. Very few emergency management plans take citizen response into account, where the latter encompasses the actions taken by citizens in preparation for and in response to flooding with the intent to limit its effects to themselves or others [4]. Flood management planning overly dwells on the risks posed by panic and looting [4]. This preoccupation contrasts the scientific literature that depicts most citizens confronted by flood as calm in the face of danger, self-reliant and rarely if ever looting [5, 6]