Resilience to future floods through flood memory approach: An example from West Bengal, India

Managing flood situations is a combination of structural, non-structural, and socio-ecological approaches, where the latest includes an operative involvement from the local community, based on their experiences in past flood episodes. The instances of considering this indigenous knowledge and perception while planning for the flood mitigational framework in India are neither very popular a practice nor they are frequently exemplified - but while looking at the case studies from all over the world, this could be a powerful tool for gauging flood scenarios and the living with it. This paper aims to inspect the ways and approaches through which a local community memorizes the fury of floods, how this information can be put in a quantitative way, and can be realistically functioning for coping with future flood consequences. Focusing on the flood memory approach for community resilience, we present the findings of archival research, site-specific folklores and mythological stories (cultural), social methods, verbal methods, exploration of flood markers (structural), and campaigns and exhibitions (educational). A digital questionnaire-based survey was conducted in the most flood-suffering wards of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation area in West Bengal, and upon receiving the reactions, a Flood History Volatility Scale (FHVS) has been devised to test how the strength of an individual's flood memory varies due to some controlling factors. Based on the results obtained from memory work and perceiving the importance of community knowledge during the survey, a comprehensive flood risk management approach has been proposed for flood risk reduction and developing community resilience.