Flood Incident Management – A FRAMEwork for improvement

Background

Flood risk management policies have evolved significantly in various European countries during the last two decades. It is now widely acknowledged that flood risk cannot be completely eliminated through structural measures (e.g. dams, flood embankments, increasing river conveyance). The paradigm of attempting to reduce the flood risk as much as possible purely through structural measures has progressively been overtaken by a more holistic approach to flood risk management. The management of the residual risks has become priority for natural hazards such as floods. This shift in the paradigm forms the background to the Flood Risk Management Plans (FRMPs) required as part of Directive 2007/60/EC on the assessment and management of flood risks known as the Floods Directive. These FRMPs include event management plans and are at the core of the proposed flood mitigation strategies.

In many parts of Europe work on flood incident management has tended to focus on post event surveys, generally conducted after extreme events, that have focussed on human and organisational aspects. The work has mainly been aimed at identifying the conditions that led, in a given situation, to an effective response to the flood incident or, on the contrary, to a catastrophe. This work has clearly shown, among other conclusions, the necessity of preparedness and of the need for the enhancement of flood event management plans. The more technical aspects linked to the scope and the content of these plans, as well as to the technical tools needed for their enhancement has not been studied until now.

Objectives

The objectives of the proposed research can be summarised as follows:

• to assess the effectiveness and robustness of a sample of current flood event management plans in the UK, The Netherlands and France and to assess methods by which the plans can be improved. The principles of information management theory will provide the overall assessment framework to support this comparison
• to evaluate the current tools and technical systems that are used for flood event management planning and the ability of these tools to support future flood event emergency planning with the main aim of reducing residual risk (i.e. primarily loss of life)
• to establish how currently available tools (e.g. guidelines, models) can be used to improve emergency management plans for floods and whether there are any gaps in the tools that are available
• to provide a framework by which flood incident management can be improved that will be tested in a number of case studies.

The project will yield:

• a consistent assessment approach to assessing emergency management plans for floods
• an ability to measure (in either qualitative or quantitative terms) how the residual risk (e.g. to people and properties) can be reduced due to improvements in flood event management plans
• clear risk based understanding for emergency planning organisations and other stakeholders on what is considered to be a “fit for purpose” emergency plan
• the development of appropriate guidance for key stakeholders
• trans-national lessons learnt from flood event management and methods to support the formulation of improved flood event management plans.

Workplan

The work will be carried out in six Work Packages (WPs) as follows:

• WP1 - Effectiveness and robustness of flood event management plans
• WP2 - Comparison of currently available tools for the emergency planning of floods
• WP3 - Development of framework to improve flood event management
• WP4 - Case studies utilising the developed framework to improve emergency plans working together with emergency responders, emergency planners and other stakeholders
• WP5 - Dissemination of the results
• WP6 - Management and coordination.

The relationship between Work Packages is shown below.