A rationale approach to flood risk mitigation  

The launch of the Disaster Reporting and Information Management System (DRIMS), a digital platform for online reporting of damage incurred during various disasters, by the Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA), is an innovative step towards bringing more accuracy to damage assessment. Keeping the online platform protected from any sabotage by cybercriminals is crucial to preventing data distortion. Ravaging annual floods leave a trail of damage across the state, and gathering the data often becomes a herculean task for the ASDMA authorities to make the correct assessment and estimate the rehabilitation assistance required. As floods occur in multiple waves, affecting the same groups of people multiple times, the damage assessment becomes more complicated as it also needs to consider the cumulative losses. While flood waters submerging floodplain areas are a natural phenomenon, the pragmatic approach is to focus on precaution and mitigation. This requires a drastic change in people’s response to annual floods and taking adequate precautions to reduce damage. Incidents of drowning of young children and youth in floodplain areas point towards some people losing traditional knowledge of adaptation and learning basic safety skills. This is observed more in areas that were once flooded but have embankments as protection from submergence. However, as most of the embankments have outlived their span, they are prone to breaches during floods. People in flood-hit areas getting prepared to shift to safer places on boats has been a traditional adaptation, but this knowledge also getting lost in some of the flood-hit areas is also a worrying development, and soon the boat-making craft in the state may soon be lost. The bottom-up approach is needed in flood risk management, and building awareness about using traditional knowledge of adaptation to floods needs to be mainstreamed in policy decisions. Strengthening flood embankments is an effective structural response, but it requires huge resources. Likewise, building shelter platforms is necessary to save lives, but ensuring that every flood affected village has an adequate number of such shelter structures is easier said than done due to the high financial cost involved in it. If the resources of the state get exhausted in structural responses like the construction of embankments and anti-erosion measures to disaster risks, then the state will lag in various critical sectors like health, education, connectivity, agriculture, and industry on account of the resource crunch, which is unwarranted. Building awareness about disaster preparedness even in areas well protected by embankments needs a stronger policy push. This cannot be achieved in ritualistic awareness camps hurriedly organised ahead of flood season. People living in floodplain areas must be aware of flood preparedness throughout the entire gamut. The participation of every single household, every single adult in such awareness programmes is crucial to building a resilient community. Even school-going children also need to have some basic ideas about disaster preparedness through periodic classroom activities and community events. People living in flood-hit areas learning how to swim or taking required precautions while wading through flooded areas or rowing a boat or raft on a river in spate come from the disaster-awareness of the community. Learning such safety skills is a continuous process that is usually passed on from one generation to the next. The ASDMA can help the communities learn some advanced safety skills through proper training sessions, but trained people passing on the skills to more people in their neighbourhood will go a long way towards having an adequate number of trained lunteers in the community.  The trained volunteers will be able to carry out basic rescue and relief operations until the arrival of National Disaster Response Force or State Disaster Response Force personnel, as it takes time for such specialised rescue teams to reach the disaster locations. Besides, during an unprecedented flood situation affecting the entire floodplain area, it becomes impossible for NDRF and SDRF to reach out to affected people in every single location in time. When the majority of adult residents can take care of themselves and shift to safer locations after getting early earnings, there will be a smaller number of vulnerable people, like the elderly, women, and children, who will need assistance for evacuation to higher ground—on an embankment or road or a school or public building built in a safer location. Apart from saving lives, such adaptations can significantly reduce expenditure on rescue operations, and more disaster funds will be available for post-flood rehabilitation. Post-flood rehabilitation, such as helping farmers desilt their plots of land, distributing flood-resistance seeds, and reconstructing dwelling houses and public properties that were damaged by flood waters, is more important in building the resilience of the communities and turning around local economies. The rationale for flood risk mitigation is to help the community prepare for and cope with the disaster with better and more advanced safety skills and adaptation so that more funds are available for a stronger structural response to strengthen protection measures.