On a sunny afternoon in September 2025, a group of Turkish-Dutch residents and municipal
representatives gathered in a neighbourhood in the city of Dordrecht, the Netherlands, for a
workshop on flood risks and early warning systems. Dordrecht (pop.: 123,000) is regarded as
a frontrunner in flood preparedness and public awareness in the Netherlands. Yet, when
participants were asked whether they had received or even knew about municipal flood-risk
campaigns, most responded ‘no’. This revealed a striking disconnect: even where sophisticated
warning systems and communication mechanisms exist, they do not always reach or resonate
with the communities at risk.
This gap presents a key challenge within the wider domain of early warning systems (EWSs).
As climate-related disasters, including extreme weather events, intensify, EWSs have become
a critical tool for improving disaster preparedness and risk reduction. These systems
increasingly rely on (advanced) monitoring and forecasting technologies to predict hazards and
communicate warnings to at-risk communities. However, EWS development has largely
remained top-down and technocratic, prioritising technological sophistication over everyday
community realities and local knowledge. Communication is largely unidirectional and
inadequately adapted to the linguistic, physical, and cultural diversities of at-risk populations
as well as their varying capacities to receive and respond. As a result, warnings consistently
fail to trigger meaningful (early) action, particularly among vulnerable or marginalised groups.
Recognising this gap, the Indo-Dutch collaborative project, ‘LODESTAR’, adopted a Living
Lab approach to place communities more centrally in the (re)designing and studying of EWSs.
The LODESTAR Living Labs are an attempt to supplement or challenge the predominant topdown and data-driven approach to creating and improving EWSs, which continue centring
technologies and formal expertise. Rather than treating people as passive recipients of warning
messages, Living Labs create participatory spaces where communities, researchers,
practitioners, and policy-makers interact, exchange experiences, and co-create solutions. In
doing so, LODESTAR seeks to bridge the disconnect between those who produce risk
information and those who ultimately receive, interpret, and act on it.
In 2025 and 2026, LODESTAR organised multiple Living Labs in Dordrecht, the Netherlands,
and in Guwahati and Bengaluru, India. These cities face significant flood risks in their own
ways: where in Guwahati and Bengaluru floods are a recurring reality, in Dordrecht the
occurrence of large-scale floods – whilst currently unlikely – will become increasingly
inevitable as climate change escalates. Across these diverse contexts, existing warning and
response systems leave much to desire and the Living Labs revealed both contrasting realities
and surprisingly similar concerns.
In Guwahati (pop.: ~ 1.44 million), the Living Labs offered a first opportunity for residents,
business owners, civil society actors, and local authorities to discuss flood challenges and
experiences without reservations. Participants
highlighted confusion about who is responsible
for responding during flood events, difficulties
reaching officials, and the absence of clear,
localised warning information. The discussions
also revealed how communities often rely on
informal coping mechanisms amidst declining
trust and ineffective institutional responses. The
Bengaluru (pop.: 14.7 million) Living Labs
revealed an interesting contrast, even within the
same city. In one location, flooding of a railway underpass was largely perceived as an
inconvenience rather than a major risk, particularly among relatively affluent residents with
Mapping of flood-prone locations in Guwahati
Living Lab
adequate response capabilities. In another severely
flood-affected neighbourhood, discussions were
far more intense and grounded in the lived
experiences of repeated flooding. There, residents portrayed themselves as first responders during disasters and raised concerns about “warning fatigue”, where official SMS alerts are frequently
ignored because they are lost beneath a deluge of
other messages. These discussions highlighted how perceptions of risk, vulnerability, and
preparedness can vary significantly depending on social and economic realities.
In the Netherlands, decades of successful flood management have created a perception among
many residents that severe flooding is unlikely. For numerous Living Lab participants in
Dordrecht, flood risk therefore seemed distant or abstract despite living in a flood-prone region.
Yet, even within this context, participants expressed
concerns about how warnings are communicated and
whether official systems communicate with diverse
communities adequately and inclusively. TurkishDutch participants, for instance, often preferred
relying on trusted community networks such as
neighbourhood WhatsApp groups rather than
official websites or dashboards. They also strongly
emphasised collective responsibility and caring for
vulnerable community members during disasters, in contrast to the predominant individualised
culture in the Netherlands.
What makes the LODESTAR approach particularly significant is that it moves beyond viewing
EWSs solely as technological systems. Instead, it demonstrates that effective warnings depend
equally on social relationships, trust, communication, and people’s everyday realities. By
creating spaces for dialogue between communities and institutions, the Living Labs provide an
important framework for designing EWSs that are not only technologically effective, but also
socially inclusive, locally grounded, and capable of supporting meaningful early action. Their
low-cost execution – simply requiring some printed (craft) materials, a modest functional
venue, and a group of keen participants – means Living Labs present a highly accessible and
replicable tool for pursuing early (flood) warnings for all.
