Conceptualising household flood preparedness: explaining attitudes, coping strategies, and information needs

‘Unprecedented’ flood events are increasing, and catastrophic loss of property and life is the norm despite significant public flood education and warning. This study considers two aspects of the ‘wicked problem’ of the lacklustre pairing of flood intelligence and community engagement. It explores whether authorised systems’ generic education and risk communication approaches support households to gain sufficient Know Your Flood Risk (KYFR) capability to a) gauge their personal flood risk exposure and b) proactively set coping strategies and, during events, effectively enact response plans. Fifty-eight participants were interviewed during or after significant 2022 flood events in New South Wales. Qualitative analyses revealed what supports participants’ awareness of their flood risk exposure, what coping strategies are chosen, and what is sufficient information to trigger and action response plans. The theoretical framework, explicitly chosen to explore what purpose participants’ attitudes to flood risk exposure serve, differs from existing research that predominantly studies causal pathways to explain preparedness’ beliefs. It overcame two methodological gaps—how to engage publics unfamiliar with the topic, and how to observe their KYFR capabilities. The study found publics, once aware, are willing but often unable to enact response plans. Publics mostly see official flood information as inaccessible, unactionable, and lacking sufficient local relevance. Official intelligence voids sustain flood risk exposure unawareness, amplify denial of risk, and miss explaining why-floods-behaved-as-they-did. Unauthorised productive systems emerge to fill these voids. The study identifies how ten KYFR activities map across pairings of coping strategies and response plans—varying in complexity, cognitive effort, and motivation. The actionable intelligence (Act-I) model of KYFR is proposed to explain the socio-educative dynamics that amplify the flow of locally relevant actionable intelligence, inferences, and indicators that fill data voids, provide timely and actionable warnings, and can reduce uncertainty and delays in publics taking protective actions. This thesis makes important contributions to existing knowledge on households’ KYFR attitudes, capabilities, and information needs.