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In 2016, heavy precipitation events in Southern Germany demonstrated that pluvial flooding can cause serious damages, not just in large cities but also in small and medium-sized cities. Hazard-oriented disaster management approaches to better address such spatially ubiquitous extreme events are already being developed. However, integrated strategies to reduce risk and to promote climate-resilient development pathways through both private precautionary measures and integrated urban planning are still underdeveloped. Considering the uncertainties associated with heavy precipitation, analyzing and understanding damages, strengthening people’s preparedness and improving preventative measures are central components of resilience building. This paper complements existing empirical studies on households’ preparedness and provides further insight into how resilience to flooding from heavy precipitation in cities can be strengthened. We do this by analyzing the damages caused by one particular heavy precipitation event, the preparedness of people in the affected city and their perceptions of responsibilities for improving precautionary measures. This paper presents the results from a household survey with a total of 1,128 completed questionnaires which was carried out in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany. The findings of the household survey illustrate the variety of damages caused by the heavy precipitation event and reveal important differences between households who experienced damages from pluvial flooding and those who did not. Lastly, findings of people’s perception about who is responsible for improved precautions offer interesting insights into tools that might help to enhance resilience building. Finally, the paper formulates recommendations for an improved assessment of resilience-building processes, individual capacities and planning tools to build climate resilience to extreme precipitation events.

Coastal urban regions in low-lying areas in developing countries are often hotspots of climate change related risks and therefore the analysis of different characteristics of vulnerability, resilience and transformation is an important prerequisite for planning and decision making. Even though the concepts of resilience and transformation have been discussed for some time, they often remain still very abstract. Against this background the following paper aims to illustrate how different characteristics of vulnerability: susceptibility, exposure and adaptation from resilience to transformative change can be assessed in practice at the level of individual households and different city districts. The household survey was conducted in four low-income, at risk areas in the coastal megacity of Lagos. It reveals important differences between the case study locations in terms of perceived capacities and actual responses of households to extreme events and creeping hazards. The analysis of behavioral changes undertaken after extreme events underscores that experience of loss and damage is an important stimulus for people to change their behavior. Moreover perception of actual and future risk management capacities and the performance of government institutions influences risk management regimes at the household level. It was found that at risk populations experienced both, inaction from government and individual households. This is a corrective to the majority literature that focuses on proactive local or government action. In fact, these examples of success may be quite rare and were not found in the four settlements studied in this research. The survey is part of a larger international project regarding the Transformation and Resilience of Urban Coasts (TRUC (2016). Transformation fo urban coasts Available at www.bel_truc.org ) funded by the Belmont Forum and the DFG in particular in terms of the research in Lagos.