Critical Failure Factors of Flood Early Warning and Response Systems (FEWRS): A Structured Literature Review and Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) Analysis

Flood warning and response systems are essential components of risk reduction strategies with the potential to reduce loss of life and impact on personal assets. However, recent flood incidents have caused significant loss of human lives due to failures in current flood warning and response mechanisms. These failures are broadly related to policies concerning, and governance aspects within, warning generation, the behaviour of communities in responding to early warnings, and weaknesses in associated tools and technologies used in communicating early warnings and responding. Capturing critical failure factors affecting flood warning and response systems can provide opportunities for making corrective measures and for developing a more advanced and futuristic system for early flood warnings. This paper reports the findings of a structured review that was conducted to identify critical failure factors in flood early warning and response systems. This study found twenty-four critical failure factors (CFFs). The interpretive structural modelling (ISM) approach conducted in this study resulted in identifying four different types of failure factors (autonomous, dependent, linkage, and independent) with varying dependence and driving powers. Analysis shows that governance, leadership, finance, standard operating procedures (SoP), and community engagement are the most dominating factors with the highest driving factor, which can overcome other dependent factors. The outcome of this review could be helpful for policymakers and practitioners in overcoming failure factors and implementing effective early warning and response systems.