I co-authored this.
Abstract:
Floods impact communities worldwide, resulting in loss of life, damaged infrastructure and natural assets, and threatened livelihoods. Climate change and urban development in flood‐prone areas will continue to worsen flood‐related losses, increasing the urgency for effective tools to monitor recovery. Many Earth Observation (EO) applications exist for flood‐hazard monitoring and provide insights on location, timing, and extent in near real‐time and historically to estimate flood risk. Less attention has been paid to flood recovery, even though differing recovery rates and outcomes can have immediate and enduring distributional effects within communities. EO data are uniquely positioned to monitor post‐flood recovery and inform policy on hazard mitigation and adaptation but remain underutilized. We encourage the EO and flood research community to refocus on developing flood recovery applications to address growing risk. Translation of EO insights on flood recovery among flood‐affected communities and decision‐makers is necessary to address underlying social vulnerabilities that exacerbate inequitable recovery outcomes and advocate for redressing injustices where disparate recovery is observed. We identify an unequivocal need for EO to move beyond mapping flood hazard and exposure toward post‐flood recovery monitoring to inform recovery across geographic contexts. This commentary proposes a framework for remote sensing scientists to engage community‐based partners to integrate EO with non‐EO data to advance flood recovery monitoring, characterize inequitable recovery, redistribute resources to mitigate inequities, and support risk reduction of future floods.
Summary of the Paper:
Floods harm communities globally, with impacts intensifying due to increased development in flood‐prone locations and climate change. Flooding affects communities unevenly, and the recovery process can create additional disparities in flood risk and resilience. While Earth Observation (EO) data are commonly used to map flood events, they are underutilized to monitor recovery. This is a missed opportunity for documenting inequitable recovery outcomes, which can impact flood‐affected communities’ physical safety, homes, and livelihoods and prevent preparation for and mitigation of future floods. We present a framework for EO scientists and community partners to use EO for flood recovery monitoring. The goal of the framework is to outline steps to monitor local recovery progress so that inequities can be identified and addressed.
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