Public Awareness and Education for Flooding Disasters

Abstract

In recent years, dramatic river flooding occurred in the city of Prague causing the raising of the river water level more than 8 m and the inundation of the lower parts of the city. The disaster resulted in numerous casualties and damages of buildings and infrastructures. Prior disaster analysis showed that the city was not well prepared for facing the disasters. A digital training could be a powerful tool for increasing knowledge and awareness of the citizens and providing training facilities about response to such disasters. A special Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), therefore, has been developed focused on flooding in Prague offering educational material in crisis flooding. Dedicated technologies have been developed such as a flooding alert and a nonverbal communication language based on icons. The MOOC enables participants to train the new technologies. Participants can also play roles in the crisis management team to increase the sensitivity of the complexity of a flooding crisis and its measurements. The first prototype of the MOOC was tested on a group of students of the Technical Universities of Prague and Delft. The test results will be reported.