ASSISTANCE & RECOVERY
PROJECT PROGRESS
Emergency Management Questionnaires
Project & Questionnaire Summary There is no doubt that floods are the most common and widespread natural disasters. Flooding may have considerable impacts on people and society, property, critical infrastructure, environment and cultural heritage. AA-Floods is an European initiative that aims on implementing improved and/or new flood risk management and response techniques, strategies, and regulations ...
The last phase in a Flood Emergency is the assistance to the affected people. Two Activities will be developed:
- The Improvement of the evacuation protocols, not so much in the logistical aspects as in the handling of information and the hierarchy of the target groups. In fact, in the face of a crisis, not all affected people have the same priority, because not all are equally vulnerable.
- Improvements in current protocols as, for example, in the Prevention phase, boosting cooperation among Social Services, Urban Planning, Cadastre, and Rescue teams to identify and geo-locate people with reduced mobility, which would be the priority evacuation group in the areas of greatest risk.
Subsequently, for the Assistance phase, specific evacuation protocols would be developed to facilitate the execution of these guidelines, which will be included in the Local Flood Action Plans. A specific focus will be placed on psycho-social care so that those affected can overcome the trauma of the flood (from loss of shelter, housing, animals, even family) as soon as possible and in the best way possible.
The results will be tested and verified in the Pilot cities, and through an iterative method they will make contributions to the defined procedures.
ACTIONS
ACTION
Improvement on evacuation protocols
This action seeks to take advantage of AA-FLOODS achievements such as the early warning of river overflows (Pilot 2), the modeling of reservoir discharges (Pilot 3) and the Local Flood Risk Management Plans (Pilot 1).
A new generation of high resolution 3D maps, flood simulations, and Action Plans should lead to improvements in the evacuation and shelter protocols to make them more effective in preventing human losses.
Enhanced evacuation and shelter protocols will materialize in proposals to Regional policies that improve the current protocols in the Regions participating in AA-FLOODS so that they can benefit from technical, organizational and regulatory advances of the project in favor of the attention to those affected.
It is expected a decrease in emergency evacuations thanks to more effective preventive actions, improvement in safety and quickness of evacuations, greater efficiency in the habilitation of shelters and reduction of adverse consequences for human health and life.
ACTION
Attention procedures. Health and Shelter
British Red Cross will develop, with the support of partners, a set of standardized tools for a renewed attention to flood victims, in order to disseminate it among the partners and to be validated by the respective local communities.
Once validated, and with contributions from the partners, informative recommendations will be developed to improve regional policies and local capacities for the assistance to affected people.
A Document will be ellaborated with recommendations for regional policy that will include a definition of procedures to organize rest centers, improve psycho-social support to those who have experienced flooding, and improve recovery.
As a result it is expected a standardised toolkit for an improved Psycho-Sanitary attention, and practical activities that will be disseminated among partners in the 5 member states for psychosocial support and recovery.
