Vernacular Flood Resilience: Constructive and Spatial Responses to Hydro‐Climatic Hazards in Seven Water‐Based Settlements

ABSTRACT Flood resilience research has predominantly focused on technical protection, governance frameworks, and probabilistic modeling, leaving largely unexamined the spatial, constructive, and ecological responses developed by communities that have inhabited aquatic environments over centuries. This paper examines seven vernacular water‐based settlements across five hydro‐climatic contexts: Kampong Phluk (Cambodia), Buenavista Sitionuevo (Colombia), Uros (Peru), Al Tahla/Ma'dan (Iraq), Bajau Laut (Philippines/Malaysia), Cai Beo (Vietnam), and Nzulezo (Ghana), through a multiple‐case comparative design founded on replication logic. Data sources combine peer‐reviewed literature, satellite imagery, analytical architectural drawings, field observation, and primary interviews conducted with inhabitants and academics in direct relation with each territory. Analysis applies a homogeneous framework across 14 IPCC AR6‐derived hazards and five exposure categories, with urban, architectural, and nature‐based responses comparatively assessed across the seven cases. Through systematic architectural decomposition of each case, from territorial organization to constructive detail and maintenance cycle, six recurring patterns are identified: streetless spatial organization, unfixed cadastral organization and territorial mobility, hyperstatic and repairable stilt structures, kit‐house logic, material cascade and resource renewal, and voluntary fallow or end‐of‐life abandonment of occupied substrates. These patterns operate simultaneously across material, morphological, and territorial scales and are present in combination in the most resilient cases. Water drought, salinization, and erosion remain unaddressed across the majority of the cases observed, constituting the primary directions for contemporary architectural intervention. The study suggests that the transferability of vernacular flood resilience patterns relies on architecture, continuous maintenance, cyclical material renewal, and collective resource governance as interdependent co‐conditions for long‐term coexistence with water.