Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
the national body with flood risk management
responsibilities (but only with permissive powers),
is now more clearly 'in charge' but is, for some, a
distant body without local accountability (House
of Commons 2008). The EA, moreover, is set to
obtain wider powers under legislation for England
in 2010, and this may well exacerbate this sense of
unease about the local flood problems of local
people being misunderstood by a nationally
focused and 'distant' organization. Continuing
difficulties with the interaction of spatial plan-
ning andflood riskmanagement -with continuing
floodplain development in certain locations - adds
to these governance issues (Penning-Rowsell 2001;
Richards 2008). The fact that these issues are just
as acute in the USA (Burby 2000, 2001) is no
consolation to those flood 'victims' who do not
know which way to turn for assistance.
.
integrated assessment of portfolios of response
options based on economic, social and environ-
mental criteria, including measures of vulnerabil-
ity, resilience, adaptability and reversibility;
.
integration of
technical and socioeconomic
modelling
through
agent-based modelling
approaches;
.
quantification of the various sources of uncer-
tainty and their propagation through the model-
ling/decision-making process;
.
a capacity for supporting a multi-level partici-
patory stakeholder approach to decision-making.
More profoundly, the recognition of the uncer-
tain nature of long-term change in flooding sys-
tems requires a reformulationof decisionproblems
in order to identify options that are reasonably
robust to the uncertainties surrounding future
changes,wherea robust optionisone that performs
acceptably well for a wide range of possible future
conditions (Hall and Solomatine 2008).
Uncertainty as to response effectiveness
As we move away from flood defence and towards
flood risk management - with its portfolios of
measures - so the outcomes of interventions be-
come less certain. A flood wall subject to a load it
can withstand is 'safe', and can be seen to be safe,
but a flood warning systemmay involve messages
not getting through and advice that is poorly un-
derstood (Parker et al. 2007a, 2007b). The public's
behaviour in response to flood warnings may not
be what is expected by those developing the fore-
casts and giving the warning (Penning-Rowsell
and Tapsell 2002; Parker et al. 2009), and a stan-
dardized approach to flood warning message de-
sign and dissemination methods - from a national
body such as the Environment Agency with a
national focus - may not resonate with the kind
of informal arrangements that have been effective
in the past (Parker and Handmer 1998). The public
may be reluctant to accept measures that do not
have a strong engineering focus, and therefore are
seen to 'protect' them rather than just reduce the
risk that they face (McCarthy 2008).
Uncertainty also surrounds the world of flood
insurance in the UK. By far the majority of house-
holders in the UK are insured against flood losses
by private insurance companies. This does not
Policy and Human Dimensions of Flood
Risk Management
Uncertainty in risk assessment and the effective-
ness and efficiency of policy response does not end
with the natural or physical elements of the flood
system. The human dimensions also embody un-
certainty, andhave to be analysed carefully. In that
respect there has been increasing recognition over
the last several decades that flood risk manage-
ment is about managing human behaviour as
much as managing the hydrological cycle.
Governance changes
Policy is enshrined in the institutions of gover-
nance, and the governance arrangements for flood
risk management have changed many times over
the last two decades in theUK (Defra 2005; Johnson
2005). This has often led to public uncertainty and
confusion as to 'who is in charge'. Themost recent
changes have been a reduction in the influence
of 'local people', who used to be represented on
Regional FloodDefenceCommittees operating at a
regional scale. The Environment Agency (EA), as
