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Bangladesh has a long history of dealing with seasonal changes resulting in droughts and floods. Three major rivers, the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna (GBM) come to a confluence, forming the GBM floodplain. There is a specific time window (June to September) when most of the runoff occurs and over 90% of their combined flow is discharged into the Bay of Bengal. As a result, the seasonal monsoons result in wet and dry seasons, making Bangladesh vulnerable to both floods and droughts. Climate change will likely alter characteristics such as timing and intensity, therefore increasing the challenge of adaptation. Socioeconomic conditions and high-population density limit the country's ability to adapt to these hydro-meteorological extremes. Although climatic variability causes severe damage and loss of life in Bangladesh, examples of local adaptation to the annual rhythm of seasonal variation can be found in flood-prone areas. Scientific modeling has resulted in more robust and efficient early warning systems that have greatly decreased the loss of life from climate hazards in recent years. However, positive impacts from models are limited by complex social concerns that are pervasive across the country.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the practicality of an application called the mobile geographic information system (GIS). The authors' purpose was to focus specifically on the mobile GIS application in a prototype, mobile‐based model that is utilized for detecting flood warnings and issuing forecasts. At the end of this research project, a usability study was carried out in a test‐lab environment.

In this paper, research is presented regarding the architecture of a structure that has been built on practicality. Readers will learn about a system that is applicable within a vast array of turning‐point situations where rainfall data are communicated to the system in real time.

It has been revealed that traditional GIS and remote sensing software packages are not as cost‐effective as GIS services that are mobile. Mobile GIS systems have the capability to combine GIS, global positioning system, and remote sensing abilities for retrieving geospatial data sets at costs that are not as pricey as the traditional systems. As time moves on, the need for reliable real‐time data sets is increasing. Additionally, flood management examination provides a valid debate for the combining of mobile GISs within the realm of hydrology. Empirical evidence insinuates and illustrates reliability of GIS and the enhancement in the utilization and creation of devices that are offer mobile capabilities. The usability study revealed that the slope, aspect, watershed, and flow direction functions were not easy to comprehend. It was also discovered during the usability study that the word arrangement, radio button arrangement, and dropdown list caused confusion amongst users. The issue that was deemed as most severe, that was discovered during the usability study, was the blurred comprehension that users experienced regarding the digital elevation model.

Before the wisest solution can be pinpointed, all of the associated constraints of mobile GIS mapping application need to be identified; however, enough constraints have already been identified to bring to a close that a basic mobile GIS mapping application could created and triumphantly used. There are many platforms to choose from in regards to providing a solution to a feasible incorporation of the mobile GISs into the playing field. It should be decided which browser‐based strategy would serve as the highest of benefit based on characteristics that are important to consumers, such as affordability, ease‐of‐use, user‐friendly coding, and acceptability by users.

This research is highly indicative that mobile GIS would be of great benefit for future studies within the realm of disaster monitoring management. The research presented in this paper can be deemed as original due to the fact that it is a study about the utilization of mobile technologically‐advanced gadgets that provide data analysis for flooding in real time. Moreover, these highly technologically‐advanced devices are cost‐effective compared to those in the past.

The purpose of this work is the development of a structured case study design process for developing case studies in humanitarian logistics, in particular for short-term predictable disaster situations like floods and hurricanes. Moreover, useful public sources are presented in order to enable researchers to find relevant data for their case studies more easily.

A structured framework for case study design is set up, splitting the process into different steps and phases.

The framework is applied to an illustrative example, where case studies with different numbers and levels of detail of scenarios are designed based on the three-day forecast for hurricane Harvey in 2017. The corresponding solutions demonstrate the relevance of using as much forecast information as possible in case study building, and in particular in scenario design, in order to get useful and appropriate results.

The case study design process is mostly suitable for short-term predictable disasters, but can also be adapted to other types of disasters. The process has been applied to one specific hurricane here which serves as an example.

Also for practitioners, the results of this work are highly relevant, as constructing realistic cases using real data will lead to more useful results. Moreover, it is taken into account in the case study design process that relief agencies are regularly confronted with disasters in certain areas and hence need to define the basic planning situation and parameters “once and for all” and on a long-term basis, whereas disaster specific data from forecasts are only available within a short time frame.

The new design process can be applied by researchers as well as practitioners, and the publicly available data sources will be useful to the community.

Natural flood disasters frequently happen in Malaysia especially during monsoon season and Kuala Kangsar, Perak, is one of the cities with the frequent record of natural flood disasters. Previous flood disaster faced by this city showed the failure in notifying the citizen with sufficient time for preparation and evacuation. The authority in charge of the flood disaster in Kuala Kangsar depends on the real-time monitoring from the hydrological sensor located at several stations along the main river. The real-time information from hydrological sensor failed to provide early notification and warning to the public. Although many hydrological sensors are available at the stations, only water level sensors and rainfall sensors are used by authority for flood monitoring. This study developed a flood prediction model using artificial intelligence to predict the incoming flood in Kuala Kangsar area based on artificial neural network (ANN). The flood prediction model is expected to predict the incoming flood disaster by using information from the variety of hydrological sensors. The study finds that the proposed ANN model based on nonlinear autoregressive network with exogenous inputs (NARX) has better performance than other models with the correlation coefficient that is equal to 0.98930. The NARX model of flood prediction developed in this study can be referred to as the future flood prediction model in Kuala Kangsar, Perak.

Malaysia experiences a major flood event every three years due to the adverse effects of two monsoon seasons a year. Floods have thus become the most significant natural disaster in the country in terms of the population affected, frequency, aerial extent, financial cost and the disruption to socio‐economic activities. Many previous flood control measures have had different levels of success but have generally had little effect in reducing the problem. However, it is now understood that it is neither possible nor desirable to control floods completely. Spatial information technology is thus being increasingly recognized as the most effective approach to flood disaster management. This paper reviews the spatial information technology in flood disaster management and its application in Malaysia. Some flood forecasting systems are discussed, along with their shortcomings. The paper discusses the framework of a proposed flood early warning system for the Langat river basin that operationally couples real‐time NOAA‐AVHRR data for quantitative precipitation forecasting with hydrologically oriented GIS and a MIKE11 hydrodynamic model.

Persons with disabilities face the impacts of disasters differently. Early warning systems can be one of the powerful tools to reduce the vulnerabilities of persons with disabilities and mitigate the impacts of disasters. The main objective of this study was to assess the disability inclusiveness of the current early warning system (EWS) in flood-prone areas of Bangladesh.

A qualitative method was focused on getting in-depth information. Persons with disabilities participated in focus group discussions (FGDs) and shared the inclusiveness and gaps of the current EWS. Through extensive literature review, a checklist was developed to conduct the FGDs. QDA Miner 6.0.6 software was used for coding and analyzing the data.

Results indicated that, though persons with disabilities have proper risk knowledge, the current monitoring and warning service, dissemination and communication, and response capability are not fully inclusive. A significant gap in the EWS was found in response capability. Even if somehow persons with disabilities manage to receive a warning about a flood, they lack the capacity to respond to the warning.

The study proposed that to make an EWS inclusive and effective, the concerned authorities should focus on all four parts of the EWS.

Studies related to disability and disaster management are not very common. Conducting a qualitative study provided the persons with disabilities the opportunity to share their perspectives. Future studies can focus on vulnerability and capacity assessment of persons with disabilities to identify areas requiring interventions to enhance resilience.

With the recognition of the necessity for effectively and successfully managing natural disaster projects for saving human lives and preventing and minimizing the impacts of disasters on socio‐economic developmental progress, this paper seeks to propose a balanced scorecard (BSC) approach in order to maximize the possibilities of desired outcomes from projects.

The BSC approach, which has been widely accepted and used in business organizations, can be adapted for natural disaster management projects. An application of this BSC approach to disaster management projects is discussed with a real flood disaster management project.

In the BSC approach, performance measures should be established in four areas: donors' perspective; the target beneficiaries' perspective; the internal process perspective; and the learning and innovation perspectives. Measures for four areas in each of the five generic phases of managing natural disasters (i.e. preparedness, early warning, emergency relief, rehabilitation and recovery) allow project managers to identify problem areas and areas for further improvements. Ensuring success in one phase will lead to success in the subsequent phase because success in one phase will be the input for the following phase.

In general, this study demonstrates an application of the balanced scorecard approach to natural disaster management projects and, in particular, to a real flood disaster management in Hat Yai Municipality, Southern Thailand. Future research might focus on other types of natural disaster.

Using the balanced scorecard, project managers can understand problem areas as well as areas for improvement in current projects, which would enhance their abilities to take corrective actions that ensure and maximize the possibilities of successful outcomes from implemented projects.

This paper proposes the BSC approach for successfully managing natural disaster projects. This management approach can be applied to various natural disaster management projects.

This paper aims to focus on the gap assessment carried out in the existing early warning systems (EWSs) in Southeast Asia as a means to address such gaps in terms of communication and information dissemination.

This paper was based on the surveys conducted in some of the Southeast Asian countries through interviews, group discussions and consultation to get an understanding about people’s knowledge towards EWSs and their awareness towards warning information.

The conclusions showed that there exist gaps in the existing systems which need to be strengthened to increase its efficiency for providing reliable, timely and accurate information.

Limitation of finding more references to support the work.

This paper is based on the gap assessment carried out in different countries of Southeast Asia for strengthening EWSs. This paper is the original research and has never been published in any other journal.

The purpose of this study is to provide recommendations for improving the social performance of warnings using mobile services in flash flood prone communities. A warning cannot be considered effective until it is received, understood and responded to by those at risk. This is defined as the social performance of warning communication techniques. Mobile services offer opportunities for improving this, particularly in Bangladesh, but have been underutilised. In this research, characteristics of the warning, mobile services and community are found to influence the social performance.

A framework on the factors affecting the social performance was developed and applied using data collected through interviews at the national and regional level along with focus-group discussions (FGDs) and key informant interviews at the local level in the Sunamganj District, Bangladesh.

The study demonstrated that mobile services are the preferred means of warning communication. Communities strongly preferred voice short messaging service (SMS) and interactive voice response (IVR) because of easier accessibility and understanding of the message. Text-based services [SMS and cell broadcasting service (CBS)] were still found to be acceptable. These should be simple, use symbols and refer to additional sources of information. Further recommendations include mixing push (e.g. SMS and CBS) and pull-based (e.g. IVR) mobile services, utilising local social networks, decentralising the dissemination process and raising awareness.

A limited sample of interviews and FGDs were used.

Concrete recommendations are made for overcoming obstacles related to the effective use of mobiles services.

The suggestions made can contribute to improving the social performance of flood early warning communication.

The conceptualisation of mobile services’ contribution to social performance of flood warning and field-level application.

This study aims to answer the following questions: what is the time scale in which areas downstream are affected by significant rainfall upstream, which areas are first affected, which areas are most affected, how effective is the current warning system in allotting an appropriate amount of time for evacuation, what has been the response time thus far utilizing the current warning system, how can this response time be im-proved using numerical simulation were addressed. The accu-rate prediction of floods and potential inundated areas is crucial for effective flood risk management and this paper analyses the model created for the July 12, 2012 Kumamoto flood event.

Using GIS, LIDAR, SIS and levelling field survey data, the inundated areas were mapped; the sequence of events and the distribution of flood waters were recreated using numerical analysis and modelling. The inundated areas generated by the model were then compared to the actual inundated areas.

The Tatsuda Ichi Chome area was completely inundated within 40 minutes of the first pooling of flood waters, whereas the Tatsuda Jin area was completely inundated within 20 minutes of the initial pooling of flood waters.

This research provides empirical evidence of flood impacts and highlights the benefits that can be derived from incorporating accurate flood modelling results into flood risk management systems, as well as extends the methodological approaches of flood risk management.