Selected global flood preparation and response lessons: implications for more resilient Chinese Cities

Urban populations are rising globally, and more extreme climate events are occurring, which means more people are exposed to flood hazards such as pluvial, fluvial, coastal and compound floods. Cities located in flood-prone areas beside coasts, rivers, or both are at risk because such extreme events are often coupled with insufficient drainage capacity to offload peak discharge and withstand the surge levels. Further, the combined drivers of non-climatic factors, such as increasing urbanisation and social-economic development, and climatic drivers such as increasing extreme rainfall patterns, storms, surges, and global mean sea-level rise are unstoppable. This makes it problematic to continue to rely on improving flood protection to secure resilience. This review focuses on the lessons from recent major flood events in Europe, S Asia, E Asia, Australia, America and Africa, including the causes of the events and the post-flood responses. These responses and options are core values to understand both the importance of addressing flood resilience, by responding to floods and the explicit ways to improve risk communication among stakeholders, administration and the public which seem to be the keys to minimising flood impacts on communities. Given the continuous growth of human exposure, we suggest an urgent call for authorities to enact better flood preparation and response strategies in their flood disaster risk reduction plans and policies. This review provides implications for improving the resilience of Chinese cities and elsewhere.