Early Warning: Community Interpretations and Perceptions — A Case of Recurrent Floods and their Warnings in Delhi (India)

Abstract

Damages in urban areas due to floods, as due to other disasters, have been showing an increasing trend over the past decades. This is primarily due to increasing economic attractions in urban areas and resulting population pressures where more and more people occupy vulnerable regions of land, that had been left undeveloped hitherto. Governments and the disaster management community have responded by stressing the urgent need for the improvement of forecasting and warning systems for reducing disasters, and as a result, better weather forecasting satellites with higher resolutions are launched every year, and faster and more efficient super computers are commissioned to the task of providing more advanced and accurate forecasts.