From Flood Safety To Spatial Management

This book deals with the introduction of a new type of “spatial measures" in flood governance. In contrast to traditional “safety measures" that aim to provide protection against floods by building structural flood defenses such as levees and flood walls, the goal of spatial measures is to reduce the exposure to flood risks by changing the spatial layout of flood-prone areas. By limiting developments and flood-proofing buildings in areas at risk to flooding, investments in structural flood defenses can be circumvented and vulnerabilities reduce. World-wide, spatial measures are gaining attractiveness as a response strategy to increasing flood risks caused by climate change and urbanization. The introduction of spatial measures in flood governance involves more than the simple development of new policies and laws. Research has demonstrated that the implementation of spatial measures can have huge implications for how costs and responsibilities are divided between different levels of governance and between public and private actors, changing the whole organization behind flood governance. Both for the effectiveness and for the legitimacy of spatial flood governance strategies, it is important that these distributive implications are well understood. This book describes the introduction of spatial measures in the context of two very different delta countries: the Netherlands and the United States. In the United States, a spatial flood governance strategy was already developed in de mid-20th century whereas in the Netherlands, a safety paradigm institutionalized over the course of the 20th century and spatial measures have only recently been introduced. By analyzing the science-policy interactions underlying the implementation of spatial measures in both countries, this book shows how under the influence of different types of experts (engineers in the Netherlands and social geographers in the United States) different spatial flood management strategies emerged with different distributive implications, each with its own challenges for effectiveness and legitimacy.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline.com. Centralising the role of land and landowners, Spatial Flood Risk Management brings together knowledge from socio-economy, public policy, hydrology, geomorphology, and engineering to establish an interdisciplinary knowledge base on spatial approaches to managing flood risks.

Flood risk management policy across the European Union is changing, partly in response to the EU Floods Directive and partly because of new scientific approaches and research findings. It involves a move towards comprehensive flood risk management, which requires bringing the following fields/domains closer together: the natural sciences, social sc

Taken together, the studies show that integration of adaptation in flood risk and emergency management may differ strongly _ not only with risk, but with a number of institutional and contextual factors, including capacities and priorities in the speci

Extreme floods cause enormous damage in floodplains, which levees cannot prevent. Therefore, it is vital for spatial planning to provide space for water retention in these areas. Land use planners, water management agencies, landowners, and policymakers all agree on this challenge, but attempts to make the space for rivers to provide retention are generally not very successful. Adopting an innovative interdisciplinary approach, this book examines how society can manage the use of the floodplains along rivers in the face of extreme floods, focusing in particular on the relation between social arrangements and the elemental forces of floods. The book firstly analyses why contemporary floodplain management is so often clumsy and ineffective by looking at various real-life situations in Germany, using Cultural Theory to provide a much-needed, but previously neglected social perspective. These analyses show a pattern of activity resulting from different rationalities which dominate the floodplains in different phases. During extreme floods, it is rational to manage floodplains as dangerous areas; sandbags and disaster management dominate the scene. After some time, the rationality of control takes over the floodplain management; policymakers discuss flood risk and water managers build levees. When public attention diminishes, floodplains become inconspicuous until more and more stakeholders regard floodplains as profitable land. The current system of planning, law, and property rights even encourages stakeholders to act out their plural rationalities. A permanent dynamic imbalance of different rationalities leads to a robust social construction of the floodplains which results in viable but clumsy floodplains. In the course of time, however, the patterns of activity in the floodplains lead to an increase in intensity and frequency of extreme floods, and to more vulnerable potential damages in the floodplains. Risk increases. Coping with this situation needs another kind of floodplain management. This book proposes an innovative concept - Large Areas for Temporary Emergency Retention (LATER) - in "Clumsy Floodplains" as an alternative to levee-based flood protection. The concept aims at reducing damage by extreme floods in a catchment area by inundating less valuable areas to protect places that are more valuable. It finally examines how this LATER concept might be implemented in areas where there is currently a clumsy style of floodplain management, what interventions are required and how these might come about effectively. Again, using Cultural Theory, the book puts forward a valuable land policy solution which aims at implementing LATER in clumsy floodplains and which develops an obligatory insurance against natural hazards as a responsive land policy for LATER. The book represents the author's PhD research, which he conducted as research assistant at the department for Land Policy, Land Management and Municipal Geoinformation at the School of Spatial Planning, TU Dortmund University, Germany.

Over the last decades the world has witnessed a growing number of floods in urban areas. Climate change and rapid urbanization will exacerbate this trend. Flooding incidents in urbanized catchments and low-lying areas, such as polders, can lead to great public concern and anxiety, and their economical impact is severe. Apart from well-known flood prevention strategies, new approaches to the accommodation of floods are needed to create robust and sustainable solutions that enable us to cope with the ever-increasing urban pressure on flood-prone areas and the uncertainties created by climate change. Urban Flood Management comprises a multidisciplinary survey of recent developments in this field. Subjects like spatial and urban planning, flood insurance, flood resilience, flood proofing techniques, risk perception and preparedness and flood forecasting are treated by authorities from Brazil, India, the USA and Europe. Urban Flood Management will provide anyone active in the fields of water, risk and urban management with the latest information and insights that were obtained with a global and multidisciplinary approach.

Floods are natural events, but when they impact on human environments, they turn into disasters which disrupt society. The last decades have seen an alarming increase in the number of major floods and associated damage on every continent. The impact is more severe due to population growth and settlement in flood prone areas, climate change and disr

This valuable edition brings together 25 peer reviewed articles on technical, socio-economic, environmental and policy aspects of flood risk management. Some emerging technologies are presented and several future challenges are identified. Thus the book forms an excellent reference for the engineers, scientists, planners, policy-makers, researchers, insurance industry and all the practitioners involved in flood risk management.