Dr Bell, an independent sociologist, has since May last year interviewed about 20 people who experienced the June 3, 2015, flood.
She plans to interview 100 people overall, including people in civil defence and emergency services, and people in rest-homes, to help develop a collaborative emergency mobility plan.
This could help people move about safely during flooding.
She outlined some of her preliminary research findings, in a talk she gave to
the 8th Aotearoa/New
Zealand Mobilities Network Symposium held in Dunedin on Tuesday this week.
Dr Bell is the mobilities network leader, and, in her talk, she said that southern Dunedin infrastructure, including pipes and mud tanks, had ''failed to act as it normally functions''.
These problems had ''harmed people and property'', and she said that some local knowledge about how the infrastructure was designed to act had been ''rejected''.
The Dunedin City Council had since acknowledged problems with how some infrastructure had operated, and had made several changes, including improvements at
the Portobello Rd pumping station.
Dr Bell said many people faced ''very challenging'' experiences during the flood, including one woman who had managed to get to her evening cleaning job. Floodwater ran into her gumboots, and she worked for several hours in wet feet, later becoming ill.
Others were unable to return to flood-affected houses for at least three months.
DCC staff visited a retiree in a semi-detached unit and sandbags arrived about 11.30pm. But it was too late to protect the house and the water rose inside so that ''her gumboots floated around the house overnight''.
There was a case of members of potential community volunteer networks to be better informed about what they could do to help fellow residents, in a big flood event.
