To reduce the risks posed by floods requires both scientific input and appropriate community reaction. It is not always clear that both are in evidence.

In June, two significant announcements were made about flood management research. One was about flood prediction and warning communication using mobile phone networks and artificial intelligence to provide more specific and accurate information about flood levels and impacts than current methods provide. The other, based on highly detailed modelling of the Richmond River catchment in far northern New South Wales, used flood inputs in greater detail and across a wider range of variables than are traditionally available. Both projects could do much for flood responses.

These initiatives are highly science- and technology-intensive and much to be welcomed. They could lead to finer-grained appreciations of developing floods, and thus stronger bases for the provision of information and advice in warnings.

But one wonders whether something just as fundamental — the reactions of people to warning information when floods threaten — is as fully understood as it should be and given sufficient consideration. The best science-based prediction of flood severity and impacts cannot reach its full potential if appropriate responses by individuals are not motivated.

There is real doubt about people’s responses to warnings. Too often we hear, after a bad flood, that people did not understand just how its impacts would be manifested and thus could not respond optimally. People also claim that they weren’t warned, when the truth might have been that they did not understand the warnings that were provided. They feel let down that the event, as they perceive it to have been, was not adequately communicated as it developed. The water was deeper than they had expected, it inundated areas they did not expect to be flooded, the emergency services were not on hand to help them: all these reactions are common. The “system”, it is widely felt, did not work as it should have.

What is needed is a re-thinking of how we educate people about environmental hazards and their management. This applies to many agents of risk, but let’s focus here on floods specifically.

Too often, people have limited comprehension as to how they might be affected by flooding. Many do not understand that they live on a floodplain, as perhaps 15% of Australians do, and are thus likely at some stage to experience floods. Especially in urban areas, building on floodplains obscures the landscape to the extent that its real nature is masked.

Moreover, few realise how extreme a flood can be, and many tend to equate the worst they have seen with the worst that nature can produce. Thus they are caught short when an extreme event strikes: it is beyond the limits of their experience. In a sense, their experience imprisons them and prevents them from understanding that worse might be in store.

And people often rely on knowledge inputs that include myths or half-truths. They use messages passed down from past generations that reflect what those generations saw, which is necessarily only those parts of the hazard that applied in the events they experienced.

Community myths — for example that a flood was caused by the collapse of a storage dam — too easily get into people’s minds after a flood even if no dam was involved in the relevant event.

In the Hunter Valley, an “explanation” arose after the disastrous 1955 flood that Glenbawn Dam, in the upper catchment, had been blown up. In fact, it hadn’t been. To come to grips with the severity of the flood, people seemed to need something that went beyond natural forces (like a weather system producing extreme rainfall) and into the realm of human interference. They did not have a clear picture of the potential of nature and blamed a human action that had not occurred.

Similarly, people commonly believe that levees will keep all future floods at bay. But levees are not built to do that; they mitigate, rather than solve, the problem and several in Australia have failed or been overtopped during big floods in recent times.

Messages directed at people who might be at risk of flooding seem all too often not to “land” appropriately. Messages often seem timid, unlike those on TV in recent times on HIV-AIDS, speeding and smoking which have been vivid and frightening.

Take the oft-repeated advice that people not drive through floodwaters, a common cause of deaths at flood time. State and territory emergency service spokespeople repeat this message over and over, almost in rote fashion, but still people drive into floodwater and occasionally deaths result. We are hard-wired to achieve our destinations, and merely noting the risks associated with driving into floodwaters fails to “break through” people’s mindsets. Our messages must be more “arresting”.

The fact that some drivers have been punished with jail sentences for having entered floodwaters and caused the deaths of passengers should be publicised: this would illustrate the point about the danger more clearly. Similarly, the possibility that insurance might be voided when a vehicle is damaged or written off as a result of contact with floodwaters should be utilised in educational campaigns to render the message in a more “practical” manner.

Our school education, delivered via geography or science curricula, probably falls short in terms of making learning about flooding “real” and of relevance to actual people. And post-school educational initiatives, through the media and by other means, are also lacking – especially in terms of boldness.

Science and technology are vital inputs to flood management, and investments in them are much to community benefit. But to be genuinely effective they need to be trusted and heeded by individuals in flood-liable communities. This is a matter of engagement and educational processes. Of these we do comparatively little in relation to floods and how people should deal with them.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.