In July 2021 the German states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate experienced floods which affected tens of thousands of people and had an economic impact of over EUR 30 billion.
The German Committee for Disaster Risk Reduction published a report in January 2024 reviewing and drawing lessons from these floods. The report examines six areas of particular interest to the flood response with a focus on governance and communication. These five areas are: documentation of the floods, weaknesses of the warning system including the state of relevant infrastructure, response of the affected populations to warnings, governance arrangements during the floods, administrative and institutional capacity, and finally the integration and operationalisation of inputs from relevant administrations into the federal civil protection system.
The report summarizes the results of different studies carried out as part of a research project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Germany to generate a better understanding of communication and governance structures during the floods in July 2021. In a collaborative effort between various faculties of five universities in Germany and the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance, the report examines various angles of the flood response, evaluates the approaches taken collectively and individually and then determines key lessons.
As part of the report, several surveys were carried out, targeting both the affected population but also employees of relevant governmental institutions. One of these surveys revealed, for example, that over 30% of respondents indicated they had not been warned about the increasing flood risk, despite warnings having been issued through several channels, such as apps, relevant authorities’ social media accounts or the radio. To counteract this, the researchers now recommend the enhancement of warnings to increase comprehensibility among the target population.
The proposed measures include making recommendations for action unambiguous, describing the expected event clearly including the impact, using plain language to reach all members of the potentially affected population, illustrating the warnings using maps and easily understandable charts, increasing the understanding of the population’s own role within the warning chain and adding additional warning channels like employers as multipliers, social media, or phone chains.
Additionally, boosting the overall preparedness to crises by facilitating skill enhancement for all public servants and increasing the risk awareness, as well as the potential to implement the offered recommendations for action are also highlighted by the researchers as a means to improve the reaction to crisis events.
Further key findings and recommendations include strengthened resilience and fail-safety of gauges and other measuring stations, the implementation of an Emergency Warning Functionality (EWF) on the basis of Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB), increasing the knowledge about the emergency response structures among the responsible public servants, improving the knowledge management in public administration, and establishing networks that include public and private actors as well as the population.
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