Toward More Actionable Flood‐Risk Information

The increasingly urgent need to develop knowledge and practices to manage flood risks drives innovative information design. However, experts often disagree about design practices. As a result, flood‐risk estimates can diverge, leading to different conclusions for decision‐making. Using examples of household‐scale fluvial (riverine) flood‐risk information in the United States, we assess design features and risk communication approaches that may lead to more actionable information for decision‐making. We argue that increased attention to uncertainty characterization and model diagnostics is a critical intermediate step for developing simpler approaches for designing flood‐risk information. Simpler frameworks are desirable because flood risks change over time, and simpler frameworks are less costly to update. Developing frameworks for large spatial domains require collaboration grounded in principles of open science. Finally, systematically evaluating how decision‐makers access and use information can provide new insights to guide risk communication and information design. Plain Language Summary Climate change can cause temperatures to rise and precipitation to become more extreme. The impacts of these changes on flooding vary in space and time and are uncertain. For example, changes in future flooding differ between urban and rural areas. We discuss the diversity of available approaches for creating flood‐risk information. We suggest avenues for improvement, including (a) refining model diagnostics and uncertainty characterization to identify simpler model frameworks; (b) increasing information transparency and accessibility; and (c) improving understanding of links between decision‐making and risk communication. Key Points Designing flood‐risk information for decisions about property‐scale flood adaptation poses nontrivial conceptual and operational challenges Many national‐scale flood‐risk estimates fail to account for regional flood‐risk dynamics, especially information that integrates projected future changes Promising avenues toward more actionable flood‐risk information include improving uncertainty characterization, design transparency, and risk communication