Recurrent Governance Challenges in the Implementation and Alignment of Flood Risk Management Strategies: a Review

Abstract

In Europe increasing flood risks challenge societies to diversify their Flood Risk Management Strategies (FRMSs). Such a diversification implies that actors not only focus on flood defence, but also and simultaneously on flood risk prevention, mitigation, preparation and recovery. There is much literature on the implementation of specific strategies and measures as well as on flood risk governance more generally. What is lacking, though, is a clear overview of the complex set of governance challenges which may result from a diversification and alignment of FRM strategies. This paper aims to address this knowledge gap. It elaborates on potential processes and mechanisms for coordinating the activities and capacities of actors that are involved on different levels and in different sectors of flood risk governance, both concerning the implementation of individual strategies and the coordination of the overall set of strategies. It identifies eight overall coordination mechanisms that have proven to be useful in this respect.

Governance Strategies for Improving Flood Resilience in the Face of Climate Change

“…Flood risk management literature is well-grounded in risk assessments and future scenarios and is based on profound insights into the effectiveness of technical measures [10,11]. In contrast, the question of which governance actions should be taken to improve flood resilience has received lesser attention, despite the strong barriers that social and institutional factors often present to successful flood risk management [11][12][13].…”

Flood Risk in a Range of Spatial Perspectives – from Global to Local

“…The priorities for action refer to understanding of disaster risk in its dimensions of vulnerability, capacity, exposure of persons and assets, hazard characteristics and the environment. Such knowledge can be used for risk assessment, as well as to various flood risk reduction strategies -prevention, mitigation, preparedness and response, recovery and rehabilitation (see Dieperink et al, 2016…”

“…But, it is also necessary to prepare to living with floods. This embraces flood mitigationkeeping water where it falls, flood preparationforecasting, warning, as well as preparation for evacuation and recovery (see Dieperink et al, 2016;Driessen et al, 2016;Hegger et al, 2016;Nieland and Mushtaq, 2016).…”

Explaining stability and change. Comparing flood risk governance in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Poland

“…Bubeck et al, 2015) as well as studies that do provide good assessments of specific developments in specific countries (Coulthard and Frohstick, 2010;Johnson and Penning-Rowsell, 2010;Kjeldsen and Prosdocimi, 2016). But there is a knowledge gap as regards comparative case studies that provide a clear and explicit operationalisation of the object of study, that is, stability and change in FRG, and include a wide range of explanatory factors and their interrelationships (Hegger et al, 2014;Dieperink et al, 2016;Kjeldsen and Prosdocimi, 2016;Wiering et al, 2017). Hence, this special issue's main research question was: what explains stability and change of FRG and what is the role of mechanisms of path dependency and of path change therein?…”