Floods

Structured collaboration among stakeholders to enhance community resilience

COPE Disaster Champions provides free illustrated children’s books, educational jingles and a digital platform to teach disaster preparedness and risk awareness. Through storytelling, visuals and simple action-oriented messages, the initiative empowers children to understand risks and adopt safe behaviours before, during and after disasters.

RiskMap is an open, transparent, web-based platform that collects verified, real-time disaster reports from citizens via social media/chatbots and visualizes them on an interactive map.
Residents report hazards (e.g., flood location/depth, road closures, storm damage) and the map helps communities avoid danger and navigate to safety.
Emergency managers can use the same data stream (and, in some deployments, a dedicated dashboard) to support situational awareness and response planning.

Local Resilience Agents (LRAs) are community members trained in disaster risk reduction, first aid, and search and rescue to supplement local government capacity and disseminate early warnings.

The kit consists of four thematic sections:

Risk Runner is an interactive video game designed for children aged 9 to 12, which transforms learning about safety into a dynamic and fun experience. Through realistic scenarios – such as floods, forest fires, earthquakes, and environmental crisis – players face challenges and mini-quizzes that teach them how to behave correctly in an emergency. The game combines racing and gamification elements with educational content, promoting awareness, prevention and resilience.

This guide provides practical strategies for engaging children as active participants in disaster risk reduction. It frames children not merely as vulnerable groups but as agents capable of contributing ideas, identifying risks, and supporting community preparedness. Through participatory methods, case studies, and hands-on activities, the guide demonstrates how children can be meaningfully involved in planning, prevention, and resilience-building at the community level.

The Ritorno Com’E.Ro. project was launched by Save the Children Italia in response to the devastating floods that struck Emilia-Romagna in May 2023. Its primary aim was to restore educational continuity for children and adolescents affected by the disaster, while fostering resilience and awareness of risk prevention within the school community. The initiative ran from November 2023 to May 2024 and involved 54 classes across five schools, reaching more than 1,100 students.

The project consists of three structured workshops: Explore (building awareness of risk and resilience through storytelling and games), Experience (role-playing emergency scenarios to practice safe behaviors), and Participate (hands-on engagement via VR or the dynamic team game “Corri il Rischio”). The initiative equips children with practical skills for emergency preparedness and fosters collaboration, decision-making, and climate crisis awareness, positioning Feel Safe as a pioneering model for integrating technology and education in resilience-building.

The CBDRR approach developed by Solidarités International is a participatory methodology that places affected communities at the centre of disaster risk analysis, planning, and action. It combines local knowledge with technical expertise to identify hazards, vulnerabilities, and capacities, and translates this shared analysis into concrete preparedness, mitigation, and response measures implemented at community level.