Evaluating the Egyptian Flood Mitigation toward Resilience

This paper evaluates the flood mitigation strategies employed by the Egyptian government to increase resilience to flooding. Existing literature in the field of disaster risk management highlighted the urge to shift the focus from response and recovery to mitigation. It is argued that in order for this shift to occur, it is necessary to integrate disaster management, community awareness and preparedness. Current practices in developing countries seldom reflect such a synthesis, and this is one of the reasons why hazard awareness is absent from local decision-making processes. Policy reviews and community initiatives are traced to explore the effectiveness of Egyptian’s system in reducing the impacts of flooding on vulnerable populations and its potential to increase the resilience of communities to future floods. Therefore, it highlights the government's challenges in implementing these strategies. We argue that realising the available resources and tools for flood mitigation strategies in developing countries requires different measures and procedures due to the magnitude of challenges facing the government, therefore, community resilience is one of the key factors in this process. Accordingly, this paper provides recommendations for further research and policy development.