The overall objective of this two-year project is to assist efforts to boost resilience of communities in flood prone areas. It does so by 1) identifying important factors which amplify or dampen flood resilience as well as strategies and measures that increase flood resilience; 2) providing guidance on the operational use of ‘flood resilience’ into flood risk management (FRM) and 3) providing practical policy recommendations to aid the implementation of the EU Flood Risk Directive (FRD).
24 months from 01/05/2009 to 01/09/2011
https://www.cmcc.it/freeman
General aims
The overall objective of this two-year project is to assist efforts to boost resilience of communities in flood prone areas. It does so by 1) identifying important factors which amplify or dampen flood resilience as well as strategies and measures that increase flood resilience; 2) providing guidance on the operational use of ‘flood resilience’ into flood risk management (FRM) and 3) providing practical policy recommendations to aid the implementation of the EU Flood Risk Directive (FRD).
The specific objectives are:
- To convey the concept of resilience to decision-makers, flood managers and public, and help to translate its main underpinnings into flood management practices;
- To identify important drivers that affect (amplify or dampen) flood resilience, as well as strategies and measures that increase flood resilience, by focusing on: 1) risk perception and communication; 2) flood risk assessment and flood forecasting systems and 3) flood policy framework and institutional set-up;
- To identify quick wins (much gain with little effort) to enhance flood resilience on case study level in close cooperation with the case studies’ flood managers;
- To provide guidance on the integration of flood resilience into flood risk management as a contribution to the implementation of the Flood Risk Directive (FRD);
- To disseminate project results to the policy level, as well as to the scientific community;
CMCC Role
CMCC trough its CIP division leads partner for the WP4 on flood institutions, as such it will guide policy related analyses in all revisited flood events chosen for this project. CMCC will also perform assessments foreseen under the other WPs for the Italian flood events. Moreover, CMCC will take part in the synthesising the knowledge gained and producing recommendation for the flood policy implementation.
Expected results
Recommendations for improvement of the flood risk management in the case studies, and practical suggestions for including the concept of ‘resilience’ in the (river-basin wide) flood risk management plans, compelled by the EU Flood Risk Directive.
Activity
The project consists of 5 Work Packages (WP).
- WP1 (Project co-ordination and framework development) is dedicated to the project co-ordination, development of an overarching framework and the co-ordination of linkages and exchange of information and results between all WPs.
- WP 2 (Risk perception and communication) seeks to optimise the interplay between strategies and tools for risk communication.
- WP 3 (Flood Event Management Tools) aims to identify and optimize strategies and measures that improve flood resilience as a direct outcome of the actually available flood management tools. A focus is put on two types of available tools: 1) flood event management plans and 2) flood forecasting or early warning systems.
- WP4 (Flood policy frame work) aims to describe and compare institutions linked to flood management across the participating countries, and to assess the role these institutions played in the specific case of the revisited flood events. WP4 will also address the policy responses in the aftermath of the revisited flood events, and review efforts to transpose the Flood Risk Directive (FRD) into national legislatives and implement its provisions through the flood management plans (evaluated in WP3).
- WP5 (Guidelines and dissemination) encompasses dissemination activities (guidelines, leaflets, brochures, reports, final workshop) in order to ensure that consolidated project results are meaningful for practitioners and policy makers and to promote their up-take on the policy level as well as application by relevant authorities, stakeholders and end-users in the concerned pilot case regions.
Recent flood events in Belgium (Demer river basin – Flanders), Germany (Leine-Innerste catchment) and Italy (Region of Calabria) will be analysed in depth, thereby reviewing available knowledge about costs, fatalities, legal implications, flood protection in place and assessments of risk before and after the events. The desk study will be supplemented with a combination of questionnaires and interviews addressed to civil society organisations, disaster management authorities, experts and selected stakeholders.
Partners
- Soresma
- Seecon Deutschland GmbH
- CMCC - Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change