Public health implications of flood risk management

Flooding is one of the most common natural hazards to impact human society, affecting millions of people around the world each year. The frequency and severity of floods have been increasing in recent decades due to a combination of factors, including climate change, urbanisation, and socio-economic development. In addition to causing significant economic damage, floods can also have serious public health implications. 

Floods can cause a wide range of health problems, including injuries, waterborne diseases, and mental health issues. During a flood, people may be injured by debris, electrical hazards, or drowning. In addition, flooding can lead to the contamination of drinking water sources or further spread illnesses related to poor sanitation, or simply those that are naturally waterborne.

Floods can also have a significant impact on mental health. The loss of homes, possessions, and loved ones can be traumatic and can lead to anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Children, the elderly, and people with pre-existing mental health conditions are particularly vulnerable to the psychological effects of flooding.

Effective flood risk management can help to reduce the public health impacts of flooding. One important strategy is to improve early warning systems and evacuation plans. This can help to ensure that people have enough time to evacuate before the flood water arrives, reducing the risk of injury and death, assuming people are aware of what to do in an emergency. In addition, early warning systems can help to prevent the contamination of drinking water sources by providing information on where and when to boil water or use water treatment tablets.

Another key strategy is to improve the resilience of buildings and infrastructure. This can include measures such as elevating homes and buildings, building flood walls or levees, and improving drainage systems. By making buildings and infrastructure more resistant to flooding, we can reduce the risk of injury and damage to property. This could be an important way of limiting the mental health impacts of a flood, simply through trying to minimise the flood as much as possible. Effective flood risk management can help to address the mental health impacts of flooding. This can include providing psychological support services to affected individuals and communities. For example, after a flood, it may be necessary to provide counselling services to help people cope with the trauma of losing their homes or possessions.

However, the problem with approaching flooding in this manner is that it is out of the scope of flood risk managers who are bound by legal and institutional rules that means their primary focus is on the monetary damage and managing the water, with health a known secondary impact but one left to others. The health perspective is the reverse. There is a need to bring the two fields together and how we work across these siloed patterns of behaviour, a starting point can be in understanding how we can transfer interventions across different fields and expertises. 

Read more about ‘The potential for property-level flood adaptation as a flood disaster mental health intervention’

Features Researcher

Paul Hudson

Paul Hudson is a Lecturer in Environmental Economics. He is a generalist researcher in the fields of climate change adaptation, disaster risk management, and nature-based solutions for both, looking at the role of the individual in responding to the threats of climate change and disasters (flooding specially). His current projects look into how we can build the business case for private sector investment in a range of nature-based solutions. Before joining the University of York, Paul completed his PhD research into the use of flood insurance at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, after which he spent four years at the University of Potsam's Institute for Environment and Geography's natural hazard risk research group. Profile