Introducing the Flooding and Society Survey Dataset: Development, Implementation, and Select Findings

Abstract Data inform weather prediction as well as decision-making, and knowing how people use forecast information for different hazards is immensely valuable. While some data on public reception, comprehension, and response exist in the form of repeated cross-sectional surveys related to severe, tropical, and winter weather events, no large-scale data collection effort has thus far focused specifically on flooding. The 2024 Flooding and Society Survey is the first iteration in a planned annual data collection effort to capture how people receive, understand, and respond to flood forecasts and warnings. This first survey had a sample of 1200 U.S. adults and was fielded in June 2024. Initial results indicate that most people receive and understand information about floods for their area and generally plan to respond in some way, but they can encounter barriers they did not expect (like power outages or a lack of transportation). Future iterations of the survey will continue baseline data collection on forecast and warning reception, understanding, and response, while also incorporating new experimental questions exploring additional flood forecast and decision-support products and graphics, and assessing reception and response to information about compound hazards (like overlapping tornado and flash flood warnings). Future surveys will also be fielded in Spanish and English to facilitate comparison across populations. All data and metadata from the 2024 (and future iterations) of the survey are (will be) accessible in an open-access repository for use by researchers and practitioners interested in flood risk communication. Significance Statement Researchers developed and conducted a first-of-its-kind nationwide survey of U.S. adults to systematically track public perceptions, understanding, and responses to flooding hazards and forecasts, as well as other key metrics, across time and geography. This survey is designed to be an annual, open-access effort, creating a baseline dataset on public perceptions of flooding that is accessible to researchers and practitioners interested in flood risk communication.