A Review of the Methods Used to Improve the Resilience of Communities in Low-Income Countries to Coastal Floods and Their Relevance to the U.S.A.

Coastal communities in low-income countries are often very vulnerable to storm surges. Many low-income countries have achieved considerable success in increasing the resilience of their populations to coastal flooding and tropical cyclones. For example, the Bangladesh Cyclone Preparedness Programme has successfully warned, evacuated and sheltered millions of people from cyclones since its inception in the early 1970s, reducing loss of life from extreme cyclonic events by several orders of magnitude. Cuba is affected by hurricanes that often hit the U.S.A. However, when normalized the number of deaths caused by recent hurricanes is 20 times lower in Cuba than it is in the U.S.A. This paper briefly examines how Bangladesh and Cuba, have increased their social resilience to coastal flooding and whether the lessons learnt are transferable to disadvantaged coastal communities in the U.S.A. in order to assist them in improving their own resilience to hurricanes and coastal flooding.