Reading the river to build resilience to floods

In Nepal, climate change is intensifying flooding through heavier and more erratic rainfall, placing lives, livelihoods and infrastructure at growing risk. In riverine areas, excessive rainfall causes flash floods, road damage and landslides that cut off or wash away whole villages, with low-income farmers among the hardest hit.

Strengthening resilience to river flooding requires improved risk‑management infrastructure, reliable forecasting and early‑warning systems, and effective risk‑transfer solutions such as insurance. These measures depend on accurate and timely river‑level data. In Nepal, the high cost of existing monitoring equipment means that many medium‑sized and smaller rivers remain unmonitored, resulting in late flood warnings and limited time for communities to prepare and respond. Expanding monitoring and improving early warnings are critical to reducing flood‑related losses and supporting resilient development.

In this ongoing Swiss Re Foundation-supported project aimed at poor farming communities in Nepal, Practical Action is increasing access to timely, locally relevant early warnings for river flooding using LIDAR-based technology and remote weather stations to monitor currently unmonitored rivers and more effective systems for sharing flood forecasts and early warnings. It is also building communities’ flood awareness and preparedness through trainings and simulation exercises and developing and testing index-based flood insurance targeted at poor farming communities.