Flood vulnerability reduction. Case study: Tazlău river basin, downstream of its confluence with Tazlău Sărat

The issue of water management as well as its impact on the community has been both a challenge and a concern of the European Union, which lead to adopting the Directive 2007/60/EC with the purpose of establishing a framework for the assessment and management of flood risks, by which the member states had to identify the areas for which they conclude that potential significant flood risk exist or likely to occur and to develop flood risk management plans and measures to reduce the consequences of flooding. In this respect, the Siret Water Basin Administration has declared the area of the Tazlău river, as a significant flood risk area (A.P.F.S.R.) (*** A.B.A Siret). The Tazlău River is a left-bank tributary to the Trotuș River, passing through the ten communes and partially through the outside the built-up areas of Onești city. Recent studies have shown the benefits of reservoirs and floodplains, as these provide the most effective way to buffer the effect of floods by slowing and spreading the discharge of a river (Băloi, 1980). By restoring and improving an existing lateral floodplain in the Tazlău River basin, in order to store part of the floodwaters that cause significant adverse consequences, will reduce the flood vulnerability of its crossings.

A Revised Approach to Flood Damage Estimation in Flood Risk Maps and Flood Risk Management Plans, Poland

This article describes the determination of asset values in residential and industrial areas in Poland that can be used in the preparation of flood hazard and risk maps (FRMs) and flood risk management plans (FRMPs). In the Floods Directive’s first cycle of implementation (2010–2015), German indicators of asset value were adapted to Polish conditions. This approach was used due to the lack of national statistics necessary to determine the value of property. In this study, the asset values in residential and industrial areas were prepared on the basis of the nationwide household wealth survey conducted in 2016 by the Narodowy Bank Polski (the central bank of Poland) and other data available from Statistics Poland. The proposed approach enables the determination of asset values based on real, validated data. The obtained indicators result in higher and more realistic values of the assets of households (buildings with contents) and the assets of companies (fixed assets and stocks) operating in both residential and industrial areas. The proposed approach, as an extension in relation to the first planning cycle, has been implemented in the second cycle of FRMP preparation in Poland.

Rye Island, 2010: Impact of the flooding on the groundwater level

During the flood situations in May and June 2010, the culmination of the Váh River and the Danube River was accompanied by the groundwater level rising in the Rye Island, in some boreholes even to their maximum measured levels. The increased groundwater level caused major problems, e.g. flooded cellars and underground spaces, contaminated drinking water in wells, flooded railways and farmlands. As a part of the research concentrating on the groundwater flooding phenomena in the Rye Island, the flood situation from the year 2010 was reconstructed, establishing the basis for a construction of the flood hazard maps and flood risk management plans. The problem was solved with a MODFLOW numerical model using the Groundwater Modeling System.

Hydroinformatic Tools for Flood Risk Map Achievement

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.

Dynamic maps of human exposure to floods based on mobile phone data

Floods are acknowledged as one of the most serious threats to people's lives and properties worldwide. To mitigate the flood risk, it is possible to act separately on its components: hazard, vulnerability, exposure. Emergency management plans can actually provide effective non-structural practices to decrease both human exposure and vulnerability. Crowding maps depending on characteristic time patterns, herein referred to as dynamic exposure maps, represent a valuable tool to enhance the flood risk management plans. In this paper, the suitability of mobile phone data to derive crowding maps is discussed. A test case is provided by a strongly urbanized area subject to frequent flooding located on the western outskirts of Brescia (northern Italy). Characteristic exposure spatiotemporal patterns and their uncertainties were detected with regard to land cover and calendar period. This novel methodology still deserves verification during real-world flood episodes, even though it appears to be more reliable than crowdsourcing strategies, and seems to have potential to better address real-time rescues and relief supplies.

Dynamic maps of people exposure to floods based on mobile phone data

Floods are acknowledged as one of the most serious threats to human lives and properties worldwide. To mitigate the flood risk, it is possible to act separately on its components: hazard, vulnerability, exposure. Emergency management plans can actually provide effective non-structural practices to decrease both people exposure and vulnerability. Crowding maps depending on characteristic time patterns, herein referred to as dynamic exposure maps, provide a valuable tool to enhance the flood risk management plans. In this paper, the suitability of mobile phone data to derive crowding maps is discussed. A test case is provided by a strongly urbanized area subject to frequent floodings located in the western outskirt of Brescia town (northern Italy). Characteristic exposure spatio-temporal patterns and their uncertainties were detected, with regard to land cover and calendar period. This novel methodology appears to be more reliable than crowdsourcing strategies, and has potentials to better address real-time rescues and reliefs supply.