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This systematic literature review considers the potential of flood risk communications to increase households’ awareness of local flood risk, as well as to promote their uptake of preparedness actions and engagement with community-based flood risk reduction (FRR) initiatives. Accelerating flood risk is outstripping household preparedness, leading to higher costs when disasters occur. This has profound implications for the governance of urban areas on and around floodplains which often hold most of the responsibility for managing this risk.

The results suggest current research and practice gaps remain in what behaviour is targeted, what is communicated, how it is communicated, and what is learnt from evaluating education campaigns. A predominant focus of ‘get ready’ flood lists on response rather than anticipatory preparedness items may decrease their relevance for households. Education campaigns may fail to change relevant preparedness behaviours because they are perceived as irrelevant, not attuned to households’ important beliefs or agency, employ counter-productive messaging strategies, or fail to meet best practices for communicating actionable risk. Effective education messaging might well depend on co-production of local contextualised content between emergency agencies and households.