Clarifying “flood experience”: A novel conceptual model demonstrates how a flood experience emerges and what determines its intensity and character

Understanding the ways people experience and remember floods is of key importance for flood risk management policies; accordingly, there is a considerable body of studies and findings on flood experience and its various aspects. However, despite these efforts and their significance for relevant research and praxis, the concept of flood experience by itself remains undertheorized and underexamined. In this study, researchers address this crucial knowledge gap both in terms of theory and empirical evidence; they propose a novel conceptualization and model covering the ways a flood experience emerges, outlining its constituents and their relations, and demonstrating how these translate into the respective memories, meanings, and knowledge.