Flood Risk Management: Hazards, Vulnerability and Mitigation Measures
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Abstract. In recent years, flood management has shifted from protection against floods to managing the risks of floods. In Europe, this shift is reflected in the Flood risk directive of October 2007 (2007/60/EC; FRD). The FRD requires EU Member States to undertake a preliminary assessment of flood risks and, for areas with a significant flood risk, to prepare flood hazard and flood risk maps and flood risk management plans. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the FRD and discuss the challenges that the FRD poses to research. These challenges include the issue how to define and measure ''flood risk'', the selection of alternatives to be assessed, coping with uncertainty, risk communication, nurturing trust and promoting collaboration. These research challenges cannot be addressed properly within any single discipline and without involving the flood risk managers and other stakeholders. The paper therefore concludes that there is a large need for interdisciplinary and participatory research. This constitutes in fact the biggest research challenge.
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The traditional means of flood defence in the UK has been to either increase the capacity of the watercourse or to build barriers between the watercourse and property at risk. The latter approach was used in the city of Grand Forks, North Dakota, USA, but in 1997 the raised defences (levees) were overwhelmed by a flood event with an annual probability of less than 0·5% (i.e. greater than a 1-in-200-year event). Flood management is now superseding the narrower engineered solution of flood defence alone, and while flood management may well include raised defences in some areas, other approaches are also used, as the solution to the Grand Forks flood risk shows. Here large-scale removal of property from one part of the floodplain has prevented that area from incurring further damage and has also provided more ‘space’ for the river in flood times. Differences between the UK and US situations are highlighted, including the type of flood risk, the role of the city engineer, and lessons that can be learned from the Grand Forks example.
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<p>The flood events of 13-15 July 2021 in Germany brought the relevance of flood prevention acutely and once again to our attention. As the earth's atmosphere heats up, nature has more and more intense events in store for us, which push our flood protection and management measures to their limits and beyond. For planning purposes, but also in case of an event, it is therefore highly relevant to improve the communication of uncertainties and the assessment of their potential impact, e.g. in the climate or flood forecast, in a target group-oriented manner.</p><p>In Germany and in the European Union, the conditions for flood risk management have been improved since 2007 with the implementation of the European Flood Risk Management Directive (FRMD) and the amendments to the Federal Water Act. Many new instruments such as flood hazard and risk maps, building regulations or the category of flood emergence areas were introduced. For example, flood hazard and flood risk maps and corresponding management plans have been prepared on the basis of historical discharge data, water levels and hydrological and hydraulic modelling. However, recent examples have shown that the objective of the FRMD to reduce flood-related risks to human health, the environment, infrastructure and property has only been achieved to a limited extent.</p><p>In this paper we discuss why the developed maps and plans do not lead to a sufficient risk perception and why, in case of a flood event, it is often not clear what actions need to be taken when and by whom. For this, we want to highlight three aspects in particular:</p><p>1) Data: importance of using measured data and dealing with historical flood events, which are only comparable to a limited extent to today's and future conditions, which are shaped by the influences of climate change.</p><p>2) Actors: importance of involving different actors in the flood risk management planning process to strengthen risk perception and responsibility.</p><p>3) Communication: Importance of communicating uncertainties target group-specific and visualising uncertainties and their possible impacts context-specific.</p><p>For effective and sustainable flood risk management, we therefore believe that we are in need of a communication and dissemination strategy in order to contribute to a transparent description of the roles of the actors and their responsibilities. Consequently, the already developed tools (e.g. flood hazard /risk maps) should be supplemented by involving regional actors, uncertainty information and its effects should be classified and communicated to all decision-making levels in a way that is appropriate for the target group.</p>
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Knowledge on the different components of flood risk has much improved over the last decades, but research which fully takes into account not only the interactions between those components but also between different areas in a catchment or delta is still rare. Integrated analyses based on a complete system's approach at sufficiently large scale will improve our understanding of how flood risk systems with flood protection infrastructure in place behave under extreme conditions, it may help to develop sensible long-term strategies, and allows us to better prepare for flood events of all magnitudes. To illustrate the relevance of a hydrodynamic system's approach for flood risk management we analyse the effect of defence breaches on flood risks elsewhere along the lower Rhine River and discuss the use of this knowledge for flood risk management.
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The traditional means of flood defence in the UK has been to either increase the capacity of the watercourse or to build barriers between the watercourse and property at risk. The latter approach was used in the city of Grand Forks, North Dakota, USA, but in 1997 the raised defences (levees) were overwhelmed by a flood event with an annual probability of less than 0·5% (i.e. greater than a 1-in-200-year event). Flood management is now superseding the narrower engineered solution of flood defence alone, and while flood management may well include raised defences in some areas, other approaches are also used, as the solution to the Grand Forks flood risk shows. Here large-scale removal of property from one part of the floodplain has prevented that area from incurring further damage and has also provided more 'space' for the river in flood times. Differences between the UK and US situations are highlighted, including the type of flood risk, the role of the city engineer, and lessons that can be learned from the Grand Forks example.
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Abstract A society well@aware of risks must not only give attention to the prevention of flood risks but must also consider disaster management, i.e. minimising casualties and flood damages, and enhancing recovery. The Netherlands has a solid network of levees along the rivers that protect the many low‐lying polders from flooding. But nature is unpredictable, extreme events may happen, and absolute protection against flooding cannot be offered. It is common practice to perform technical and economic analyses to determine the feasibility of flood protection plans. And usually also institutional and administrative aspects are addressed. But how the people that live in the polders feel about flood risk and protection plans seldom gets due attention. This paper primarily looks into the attitude of the people. How do people live with (flood) risks and how do they feel about that? What can be learned from that for communication on flood risks and flood risk management? Finally, we give some recommendations about what elements to consider when developing a flood risk management strategy.
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