First project completed: Web viewer for flood risk communication

Our project “Web viewer development for public flood risk communications” is coming to an end. Over the last year, we have been working on this project wiht Izni Mohd Zahidi from Monash University in Malaysia and the ENAC-IT4R Research team.

The main motivation for our project is the large human, environment, and economic damage caused by flooding across the globe: flooding accounts for approximately 40% of natural disasters and 1.47 billion people are directly exposed to flood risks. Our project aims to provide integrate flood risk maps to minimize the flood hazard under various scenarios, including changes in land use and climate change. We focused on flood risks in the Selangor River catchment in Malaysia. It is important to note that flood risk is also a timely and important topic in Switzerland. Our project comprised three phases: (1) a systematic review of existing flood web viewers, (2) web viewer development by the ENAC-IT4R team, and (3) web viewer testing and improvement based on stakeholder’s feedbacks. Further details on the methodology are provided on the SOIL website.

The web viewer we created can help empower communities by making it easy for them to identify areas prone to flooding and implement preventative measures. Educated communities are more likely to embrace flood-resilient practices, strengthening their overall disaster preparedness. Our research is mapped to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable, and Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.