Overcoming data utilization challenges for built environment flood resilience: Strategies and best practices

Abstract

Built environment flood resilience is a critical challenge facing communities worldwide. Amongst various efforts to resilience, the conception towards data utilization becomes popular with enormous technological advancements. Built environment creates varieties of data at larger volumes throughout their life cycle signifying that the importance of these data in the context of flood resilience cannot be ignored. However, despite the power of data, the greatest opportunities that exist for flood resilience enhancement have been mired by numerous and complex unidentified challenges. Thus, identifying these challenges with timely relevant strategies is a significant need. One of the best ways to tackle these challenges is by viewing them through the lens of data life cycle stages. This study, therefore, aimed to identify these challenges in each stage of the data life cycle with strategies to overcome them. Semi-structured interviews conducted with 12 experts revealed the significant challenges allied with built environment data with potential future strategies. The qualitative content analysis was conducted to analyse the findings. The use of advanced sensing technologies, cloud-based storage solutions, data governance policies and the development of predictive models are some of the consequential strategies outlined in this study. These findings provide valuable insights and guidance to facilitate built environment data utilization for flood resilience.