Certainty about Communicating Uncertainty: Assessment of Flood Loss and Damage

Uncertainty in flood loss and damage assessment is inevitable due to the flaws in data accuracy and reflecting the simplification of a complex system that is inherent to any assessment. Understanding the level of uncertainty in flood loss and damage assessment would help decision makers to understand the overall loss in future events, improve planning and allocation of their resources to protect from and respond to a flood event.
 
Statistical information on uncertainty may be difficult to interpret and hence it may not be used when making decisions related with flood risk management at many levels, including by insurance companies and farmers (Poortvliet et al., 2019). If uncertainties are known and communicated properly, flood loss and damage assessment would improve effectiveness and efficacy of decision making, and in turn reduce the actual flood loss and damage.
 
A common framework and standardized techniques for communicating uncertainty to decision makers are not readily available. This research has developed a framework for communicating uncertainty for flood loss and damage assessment to the end users based on the floods in Thailand.