Preparing for floods in an uncertain future: forecasting, warning and imagination

Every week, somewhere on our planet, people die in a flood. We can now predict many types of floods well before any rain has even fallen, or the storm has even begun to form. We have spent billions of Euros setting up sophisticated flood prediction systems that undertake billions of calculations to predict when and where floodwaters will be. But what is the point of all of this if nobody can understand the danger that they are in, or imagine their homes and lives swept away? The floods in Germany in 2021 and in Valencia in September 2024 showed failures to prevent deaths. But was this a failure of forecasting science, or a failure of imagination?