Data on Local Responses to Early Warning Communications on Flood Prevention in Northern Ghana
Description
This data was collected from households with experience of flood hazards and disaster in northern Ghana using interviews and focus group discussions. It comprises both quantitative and qualitative responses from householders, seeking to measure the relationship between early warning communications and local responses to flood risk prevention. There are questions on households' knowledge of early warning communication systems, strategies and channels, households prior exposure to floods, the types of local actions adopted to mitigate flood risk and the nature of post-reconstructions interventions they have been part of. We set out to test the relationship between flood experience and households risk response behaviour using multivariate logistic regressions and bi-variate analysis such as chi-square. We found that flood experience significantly impacted the risk response adopted by householders. Similarly, the emotional state of households significantly influenced the local actions to prevent flood risk. Among the early warning communication channels adopted by disaster authorities, local FM radio proved to be more effective on the decisions of households relative to the adoption of risk mitigation measure. Despite this, based on data from 68 households and 6 separate focus groups, we found that, Early Warning information did not lead to effective local actions in disaster hot spot communities. Households were concerned about loss of properties and lives during flood disasters; nonetheless they were less likely to move away from disaster prone areas, citing factors such as inter-generational belief systems, cost of relocation, soil fertility around the riverbanks and fear of losing ancestral lands.