Flood preparedness – how societies anticipate and act before floods – remains incomplete and reactive. This review examines preparedness in the context of compound flooding, floods induced by multiple interacting factors. The paper argues that effective preparation goes beyond risk analyses, flood maps, and infrastructures; it requires integrated planning, insights into human behaviour, and governance to enable swift and coordinated actions.

COVID-19 has affected humankind in an unprecedented way, and it has changed how people perceive multiple risks. In this paper, we compare public risk perceptions in Italy and Sweden in two different phases of the pandemic. We found that people are more worried about risks related to recently experienced events. This finding is in line with the availability heuristic: individuals assess the risk associated with a given hazard based on how easily it comes to their mind.

Survey data collected over time can provide new insights on how different people respond to floods and can be used in models to study the complex coevolution of human–water systems. We present two methods to collect such data, and we compare the respective results. Risk awareness decreases only for women, while preparedness takes different trajectories depending on the damage suffered. These results support a more diverse representation of society in flood risk modelling and risk management.