How does flood resistance affect learning from flood experiences? A study of two communities in Central China.

Property-level flood risk adaptation (PLFRA) has received significant attention in recent years, as flood resilience has become increasingly important in flood risk management. Earlier studies have indicated that learning from flood experiences can affect flood risk perception and the adoption of PLFRA measures; however, it remains unclear whether and how this learning process can be affected by flood control infrastructure-specifically, the level of flood resistance it offers. This study attempts to answer the question: Do people living in environments with different levels of flood resistance learn different lessons from flood experience, manifested in flood risk perception and PLFRA? We present a comparative study of the rural village of Xinnongcun and the urban community of Nanhuyayuan in Central China. In-person interviews with a total of 34 local residents were conducted to understand how flood experiences affect flood risk perception and PLFRA. We find that learning from flood experiences in the highly flood-resistant environment (Nanhuyayuan) does not contribute to flood risk perception but further enhances flood resistance, whereas learning in a less flood-resistant environment (Xinnongcun) leads to a better understanding of flood risk and promotes PLFRA. We argue that flood resistance can affect the learning from flood experiences. High flood resistance can suppress PLFRA through a different learning process that involves learning inertia and path dependency. In the search for flood resilience, this begs society to re-examine the widespread assertion that both structural and nonstructural measures are important in flood risk management. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10584-022-03401-3.

Learning from Floods: Linking flood experience and flood resilience.

It has been argued that learning from flood experience contributes to flood resilience. However, it is unclear what such a learning process involves, and it is debatable whether flood experience always leads to flood resilience. To bridge this research gap, we develop the Learning from Floods (LFF) model to articulate the process of learning from flood experience and how it affects flood resilience. The LFF model suggests that flood experience prompts individual and social learning to give rise to flood-related knowledge, which is subject to learning opportunity, learning motivation, and prior knowledge. Flood-related knowledge could inform flood management and/or other action, which however can be limited by barriers, including information and resource availability, attitude, social capital, and policy barriers. Together, flood-related knowledge and its resulting action are considered the lesson learned, which then affects flood resilience through changing floodability, recoverability, adaptability, and/or transformability. We apply the LFF model to discuss the different learning processes and their respective effects on flood resilience in two environments. It suggests that an environment that is well-protected by flood control infrastructure is not conducive to learning about flood mitigation. Subsequently, we call for learning-based flood mitigation to nurture flood resilience in the face of climate change.