Crowdsourcing for Flood Risk Management: Harnessing Community Data and Local Knowledge
Effective flood risk management depends on timely and accurate information on rainfall, river levels, inundation areas, and impacts. Yet in many countries, especially in data-scarce regions, observation networks remain scarce and early warning systems often fail to capture community-level realities. This results in significant gaps between forecasts and the actual risks faced by households and local institutions.
Crowd-sourcing/citizen science can help address the issue: the systematic collection of data by volunteers using simple tools such as smartphones, SMS reporting, social media, drones, or participatory mapping, offers an innovative, low-cost way to bridge this gap. Integrating such approaches into national and basin-level systems also supports the Early Warnings for All (EW4All) initiative, which emphasises people-centred early warning systems and community ownership of disaster risk reduction.
Objectives of the Webinar
The purpose of this webinar is to explore how crowdsourcing can strengthen flood monitoring and management by linking community-driven data with institutional systems.
Specific objectives are:
- To showcase practical examples of crowdsourced flood data collection and its contribution to early warning and response
- To reflect on challenges and opportunities of integrating citizen-generated data into formal flood management frameworks.
- To identify pathways for the Associated Programme on Flood Management (APFM) partners to scale up crowdsourcing approaches in support of EW4All and community resilience.
This webinar is organized under the banner of the Associated Programme on Flood Management.
