Urban communities worldwide face significant flood risks due to human activities and climate change. Cities in the global South, such as Dar es Salaam, have suffered severe consequences, impacting people's lives and socio-economic development. Understanding how communities build resilience to flooding is crucial in reducing its impacts. However, research on endogenous resilience practices remains limited. This study examines the causes, impacts, and local practices for building resilience to flooding in Dar es Salaam's unplanned settlements. This study used a cross-sectional approach to collect qualitative and quantitative data from 782 households in eight wards using questionnaire surveys, interviews, and field observations. The findings show that torrential and prolonged rainfall influenced by climate variability and change, uncontrolled waste dumping, limited drainage systems, haphazard building development, and increased paved areas are responsible for persistent flooding in Dar es Salaam. Floods result in drowning, property and infrastructural damage, the proliferation of mosquito-waterborne diseases, trauma, and loss of lives and livelihoods with serious public health consequences. The respondents rely on community cohesion and labour to clean water channels and place sandbags on streets to prevent soil erosion and water from entering houses, fortify houses, build raised platforms above flood level, shelter in place, and migrate to safer areas. This study contributes to the global discourse on urban disasters and local adaptation practices for a broader understanding of climatic stresses. It provides empirical evidence on urban flooding, enabling policymakers, scientists, private sector leaders, and urban planners to make informed decisions and implement targeted interventions.

The storm Daniel and subsequent floods hit the Region of Thessaly (Greece) in early September 2023, causing extensive damage to the built environment (buildings, networks, and infrastructure), the natural environment (water bodies and soil), and the population (fatalities, injured, homeless, and displaced people). Additionally, the conditions and factors favorable for indirect public health impact (infectious diseases) emerged in the flood-affected communities. The factors had to do with infectious diseases from rodents and vectors, injuries, respiratory infections, water contamination, flood waste and their disposal sites as well as structural damage to buildings and the failures of infrastructure. The conditions that evolved necessitated the mobilization of the Civil Protection and Public Health agencies not only to cope with the storm and subsequent floods but also to avoid and manage indirect public health impact. The instructions provided to affected residents, health experts, and Civil Protection staff were consistent with the best practices and lessons learned from previous disasters. The emphasis should be on training actions for competent agencies, as well as education and increasing the awareness of the general population. Non-structural and structural measures should be implemented for increasing the climate resilience of infrastructures including the health care systems within a One Health approach.