Effective Risk Communication for Early Flood Warning in West-Africa

Introduction

Flood early warning systems (FEWS) have the potential to reduce human and financial losses caused by flooding (World Bank, 2011). FANFAR (www.fanfar.eu) is a FEWS currently under development for 17 countries in West-Africa. The success of FEWS depends heavily on the effectiveness of communication between the system and hydrologists on the one hand, and the target audience on the other (UNISDR, 2015). Although the effectiveness of risk communication receives increasing research attention, what this means in the West-African context remains unclear (Perera et al., 2019). Our research aims to uncover effective communication strategies for FANFAR considering content, format and pathways.

 

Research Approach

FANFAR is co-developed with around 40 hydrologists and emergency managers from 17 West-African countries during four one-week co-design workshops. We apply qualitative and quantitative research methods to elicit information about stakeholders’ understanding and preferences regarding various communication options. Qualitative methods include stakeholder analysis as well as surveys and group workshop sessions during three of the workshops in 2018–2020. Our stakeholder analysis (following Lienert et al., 2013) allowed us to better understand downstream stakeholders. We systematically assessed and discussed risk representation content, format and communication pathway during two workshops. Quantitative methods will include (online) questionnaires among other stakeholders including e.g. civilians, farmers, businesses and media.

 

Findings

In the stakeholder analysis, 31 participants listed 249 stakeholders, which we merged into 68 stakeholder types. We analysed them according to the “importance” of considering their interests in the FANFAR co-design process, their “influence” (power), and how strongly “affected” they would be by a well-functioning FEWS. Stakeholders that were perceived as being of “high” importance on these three dimensions were: “resource planning” (mentioned by 31%), “economic service and operations planning” (25%) and “rescue aid” (18%).

A survey among emergency managers in a co-design workshop in 2019 indicated that return periods were not very well understood or interpreted, resulting in underestimation of flood risk and insufficient response. This result is significant, as return periods are the primary risk communication format used by most FEWS (Waylen et al., 2011), including FANFAR. Preferred and better understood were statistical information about expected impacts in the form of text, as well as infographics. Our ongoing research aims to uncover the most effective combinations of content, format and pathway to communicate flood risks to different audiences. Thus, we enable the development of tailored communication strategies that trigger the intended response from recipients. Ultimately, this research should lead to more successful implementation of FANFAR and reduced impact of floods in West-Africa.