scholarly journals Flood risk perception and adaptation capacity: a contribution to the socio-hydrology debate

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 3183-3198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sven Fuchs ◽  
Konstantinos Karagiorgos ◽  
Kyriaki Kitikidou ◽  
Fotios Maris ◽  
Spyridon Paparrizos ◽  
...  

Abstract. Dealing with flood hazard and risk requires approaches rooted in both natural and social sciences, which provided the nexus for the ongoing debate on socio-hydrology. Various combinations of non-structural and structural flood risk reduction options are available to communities. Focusing on flood risk and the information associated with it, developing risk management plans is required but often overlooks public perception of a threat. The perception of risk varies in many different ways, especially between the authorities and the affected public. It is because of this disconnection that many risk management plans concerning floods have failed in the past. This paper examines the private adaptation capacity and willingness with respect to flooding in two different catchments in Greece prone to multiple flood events during the last 20 years. Two studies (East Attica and Evros) were carried out, comprised of a survey questionnaire of 155 and 157 individuals, from a peri-urban (East Attica) and a rural (Evros) area, respectively, and they focused on those vulnerable to periodic (rural area) and flash floods (peri-urban area). Based on the comparisons drawn from these responses, and identifying key issues to be addressed when flood risk management plans are implemented, improvements are being recommended for the social dimension surrounding such implementation. As such, the paper contributes to the ongoing discussion on human–environment interaction in socio-hydrology.

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konstantinos Karagiorgos ◽  
Sven Fuchs ◽  
Kyriaki Kitikidou ◽  
Fotios Maris ◽  
Spyridon Paparrizos ◽  
...  

Abstract. Focusing on flood risk and the information associated with it, developing risk management plans is often overlooking public perception of the threat. The perception of risk varies in many different ways, especially between the authorities and the affected public. It is because of this disconnection that many risk management plans concerning floods have failed in the past. This paper examines the private adaptation capacity and willingness with respect to flooding in two different catchments in Greece. The catchments of Evros and East Attica show recent flood events in the past 20 years. Two case studies were undertaken, comprised of a survey questionnaire focusing on 155 and 157 individuals, from a rural (Evros) and a peri-urban (East Attica) area, respectively, and they focused on those vulnerable to periodical (rural area) and flash floods (peri-urban area). Based on the comparisons drawn from these responses, and identifying key issues to be addressed when flood risk management plans are implemented, improvements are being recommended for the social dimension surrounding such implementation.


2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 2299-2309 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. A. Bradford ◽  
J. J. O'Sullivan ◽  
I. M. van der Craats ◽  
J. Krywkow ◽  
P. Rotko ◽  
...  

Abstract. Public perception of flood risk and flood risk information is often overlooked when developing flood risk management plans. As scientists and the public at large perceive risk in very different ways, flood risk management strategies are known to have failed in the past due to this disconnect between authorities and the public. This paper uses a novel approach in exploring the role of public perception in developing flood risk communication strategies in Europe. Results are presented of extensive quantitative research of 1375 questionnaire responses from thirteen communities at risk across six European countries. The research forms part of two research projects funded under the 2nd ERA-Net CRUE Funding Initiative: URFlood and FREEMAN. Risk perception is conceptualised as a pillar of social resilience, representing an innovative approach to the issue. From this process recommendations are identified for improving flood risk management plans through public participation.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heiko Apel ◽  
Sergiy Vorogushyn ◽  
Mostafa Farrag ◽  
Nguyen Viet Dung ◽  
Melanie Karremann ◽  
...  

<p>Urban flash floods caused by heavy convective precipitation pose an increasing threat to communes world-wide due to the increasing intensity and frequency of convective precipitation caused by a warming atmosphere. Thus, flood risk management plans adapted to the current flood risk but also capable of managing future risks are of high importance. These plans necessarily need model based pluvial flood risk simulations. In an urban environment these simulations have to have a high spatial and temporal resolution in order to site-specific management solutions. Moreover, the effect of the sewer systems needs to be included to achieve realistic inundation simulations, but also to assess the effectiveness of the sewer system and its fitness to future changes in the pluvial hazard. The setup of these models, however, typically requires a large amount of input data, a high degree of modelling expertise, a long time for setting up the model setup and to finally run the simulations. Therefor most communes cannot perform this task.</p><p> In order to provide model-based pluvial urban flood hazard and finally risk assessments for a large number of communes, the model system RIM<em>urban</em> was developed. The core of the system consists of a simplified raster-based 2D hydraulic model simulating the urban surface inundation in high spatial resolution. The model is implemented on GPUs for massive parallelization. The specific urban hydrology is considered by a capacity-based simulation of the sewer system and infiltration on non-sealed surfaces, and flow routing around buildings. The model thus considers the specific urban hydrological features, but with simplified approaches. Due to these simplifications the model setup can be performed with comparatively low data requirements, which can be covered with open data in most cases. The core data required are a high-resolution DEM, a layer of showing the buildings, and a land use map.</p><p>The spatially distributed rainfall input can be derived local precipitation records, or from an analysis of weather radar records of heavy precipitation events. A catalogue of heavy rain storms all over Germany is derived based on radar observations of the past 19 years. This catalogue serves as input for pluvial risk simulations for individual communes in Germany, as well as a catalogue of possible extreme events for the current climate. Future changes in these extreme events will be estimated based on regional climate simulations of a ΔT (1.5°C, 2°C) warmer world.</p><p>RIM<em>urban</em> simulates the urban inundation caused by these events, as well as the stress on the sewer system. Based on the inundation maps the damage to residential buildings will be estimated and further developed to a pluvial urban flood risk assessment. Because of the comparatively simple model structure and low data demand, the model setup can be easily automatized and transferred to most small to medium sized communes in Europe and even beyond, if the damage estimation is modified. RIM<em>urban</em> is thus seen as a generally appölicable screening tool for urban pluvial flood risk and a starting point for adapted risk management plans.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Toni Kekez

Many river basins are experiencing frequent flooding events with significant economic and other losses due to intensive precipitation as well as other atmospheric and hydrological conditions. European Flood Directive defined flood risk as a combination of flooding probability and possible adverse consequences on people, assets, cultural heritage and environment. Flood risk management considers implementation of different measures for mitigation and prevention of possible negative consequences related to flooding. Uncertainty can strongly affect the flood risk management process, especially near and during the flood event. A framework is proposed for implementation of uncertainty related to behavior of the endangered system in the flood risk assessment, in order to improve the decision-making process during the flood emergency response. The proposed framework is validated on the City of Slavonski Brod pilot site, where the results demonstrated that there is a significant flood hazard still present due to possible weir failure, despite the improvement of flood defense measures. Furthermore, the results demonstrated how flood risk value can significantly decrease by properly evacuating the affected population. Flood risk management on a strategic level requires a monetary quantification of possible flood risk, which is performed by calculating expected annual damage (EAD) based on the combination of flooding event probability and corresponding damages. A semi-analytic methodology is presented for estimation of expected annual damage based on the factor graph model, which enables integration of entire probability space as well as flexibility in defining input data. Furthermore, a novel approach is presented for definition of annual damage distribution based on first and second statistical moment and by employing Beta distribution. By analyzing the annual damage distribution as well as impact of different sources of uncertainty, the results demonstrated that there is a significant impact of extreme events with low occurrence probability on the expected annual damage.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Thanga Gurusamy ◽  
Avinash D Vasudeo ◽  
Aniruddha Dattatraya Ghare

<p><strong>Abstract: </strong>Because of the uncertainty and high cost involved, the Absolute Flood Protection has not been considered as a rational decision. Hence the trend is to replace Absolute Flood Protection strategy by Flood Risk Management Strategy. This Paper focus on the development of Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) model towards Flood Risk Management (FRM) across Godavari Lower Sub-Basin of India using GIS based methodologies for Flood Hazard Zonation in order to achieve global minimum of the Flood predicted Risk level.  Flood Hazard Zone Map for the historical flood events obtained with the use of GIS based Digital Elevation Models across the study area have been presented and used for the estimation of Hazard Risk. Uncertainty (or Control) Risk levels of each Flood estimated using various Flood Forecasting methodologies have been compared for the selected locations of the study area. Effectiveness of Passive Flood Protection Measures in the form of Flood Levees has been quantitatively analyzed for the increase in the Opportunity Risk and corresponding reduction in the Flood Hazard Risk. Various types of Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithms (MOEAs) have been used  to determine a Compromise solution with conflicting criteria between Hazard Risk and Opportunity (or Investment) Risk and the results were compared for each of the selected levels of Flood estimated with corresponding uncertainty. Traditional optimization method in the form of Pareto-Optimal Front have also been graphically depicted for the minimization of both Hazard Risk Objective function and Opportunity Risk Objective Function and compared with those obtained using MOEAs. Watershed wise distribution of optimized Flood Risk variation across the Sub-basin has been presented graphically for both the cases of with and without active Flood Routing Measures. <strong>Keywords:  </strong>Flood Risk Management; GIS based Flood Hazard Zonation; Multi-Criteria Decision Making; Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithms; Godavari Lower Sub-Basin of India;</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 27-32
Author(s):  
Erika Beilicci ◽  
Robert Beilicci ◽  
Ioan David

Water Framework Directive and Flood Directive of European Commission establishes the need for preparation of flood risk maps for each member country on each important hydrographic basins. Based on these established the flood risk management plan (must be finalized by end of 2015), which is a communicator and disseminator tool of the knowledge gained during two previous stages across the horizontal structures of governmental and non-governmental bodies dealing with flood protection, flood mitigation and flood struggle in general. Flood risk management plans, considered as a communicator and disseminator tool across the horizontal structures of governmental and non-governmental bodies dealing with flood protection, flood mitigation and flood struggle in general. They mainly include proposals on how to reduce the losses of lives, property and environmental through flood prevention, protection of vulnerable areas and increased flood preparedness in each river basin. The way of processing of this flood risk management plans on IT platforms changes the information stream flow. Future development plans of regions and cities will get a proper guidance and platforms for future feasibility studies. In Romania, each state institution wants to improve the skills of their employees. There is a lack of specialists who has enough knowledge about the hydroinformatics, thus in everyday work there is a very limited use of such tool, meanwhile the work with complex problems has generated recently a need to use valuable tool.


Author(s):  
O. M. Kozytskyi ◽  
S. A. Shevchuk ◽  
I. A. Shevchenko

Background of the study. Due to the increasing intensity and frequency of catastrophic floods occurrence, one of the most important tasks of the water management of Ukraine is to increase the efficiency of the existing system of flood protection due to the implementation of integrated flood risk management methods based on the assessment of flood hazard levels requirements according to Directive 2007/60/EC. The development of scientific and methodological bases for the assessment and mapping of flood hazard and risk levels, as well as the development of integrated flood risk management plans based on them, is an important and urgent task in Ukraine as an associated EU member. The purpose of the work is to highlight the main works results, performed at the Institute on the study of patterns of riverbed transformations, the development of strategies for flood risk management and scientific and methodological support of the assessment and mapping of flood hazard and risk, taking into account the nature and the intensity of river bed transformation and exogenous processes in river basins of Ukraine. Outline of the main material. Systematic research on flood protection issues and river bed evolution in IWPaLR has been conducted since the middle of the last century. The problems of the dynamics of river bed’s evolutions, ensuring the stability of dams, erosion of the tail water of dam, development of active hydraulic structures and their arrangement in river beds, forecasting river bed evolution, runoffs, development study of permissible (nondestructive) flow velocities for alluvial soils, taking into account the phenomenon of self-patching of the river bed, the dynamic equilibrium of the beds, the typing of the beds of mountain rivers, etc., were studied and solved under the natural conditions and in the hydraulic laboratory of the Institute. Based on the results of theoretical and experimental studies of river bed evolution, a number of methodological provisions on the complex regulation of channel deformations and safe passage of high floods were formulated and published a number of regulatory and methodological documents on the calculation and forecasting of river bed transformations, designing of dams and protection structures. An important role was given to the issues of regulation and redistribution of floodwater by the system of river reservoirs and replenishment of groundwater reserves. The methodological recommendations for sampling of river bed deposits and sediments, on the base of the international ISO standards’ requirements and recommendations of have been developed at the Institute, as well as the method of estimation of the river bed transformation’s dynamics, for the discrete and quantitative assessments of river bed deformations and their intensity. The paper also highlights the main results of work on the implementation of the Flood Directive 2007/60/EC in Ukraine, in particular, the development of a Flood Risk Management Strategy in the Ukrainian Carpathian River basins. In the Strategy declared the latest approaches to flood response, which foresee the abandonment of the current paradigm of "flood protection" to favor integrated flood risk management. It defines national mechanisms of strategic management in the field of flood risk reduction, directions of transboundary cooperation, coordination of works within river basins. For the future development of this Strategy, the paper presents the scientific and methodological bases for a comprehensive assessment of the total levels of flood hazard and flood risk and their mapping on a GIS basis. Conclusion. In the future, scientific research on integrated flood risk management should focus on the study of patterns of evolution of river bed and development of mathematical models of regulation of channel deformations, improvement of the flood forecasting and prevention methodology based on simulation modeling, as well as the development new management schemes for runoff ‘s regulation.


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