Abstract. The European Union Floods Directive requires the establishment of flood maps for high risk areas in all European member states by 2013. However, the current practice of flood mapping in Europe still shows some deficits. Firstly, flood maps are frequently seen as an information tool rather than a communication tool. This means that, for example, local stocks of knowledge are not incorporated. Secondly, the contents of flood maps often do not match the requirements of the end-users. Finally, flood maps are often designed and visualised in a way that cannot be easily understood by residents at risk and/or that is not suitable for the respective needs of public authorities in risk and event management. The RISK MAP project examined how end-user participation in the mapping process may be used to overcome these barriers and enhance the communicative power of flood maps, fundamentally increasing their effectiveness.Based on empirical findings from a participatory approach that incorporated interviews, workshops and eye-tracking tests, conducted in five European case studies, this paper outlines recommendations for user-specific enhancements of flood maps. More specific, recommendations are given with regard to (1) appropriate stakeholder participation processes, which allow incorporating local knowledge and preferences, (2) the improvement of the contents of flood maps by considering user-specific needs and (3) the improvement of the visualisation of risk maps in order to produce user-friendly and understandable risk maps for the user groups concerned. Furthermore, "idealised" maps for different user groups are presented: for strategic planning, emergency management and the public.

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With view to the high share of the transport sector in total energy consumption, e-mobility should play an important role within the transition of the energy systems. Policymakers in several countries consider electric vehicles (EV) as an alternative to fossil-fueled vehicles. In order to allow for the development of EV, the charging infrastructure has to be set up at locations with high charging potential, identified by means of various criteria such as demand density or trip length. Many methodologies for locating charging stations (CS) have been developed in the last few years. First, this paper presents a broad overview of publications in the domain of CS localization. A classification scheme is proposed regarding modeling theory and empirical application; further on, models are analyzed, distinguishing between users, route or destination centricity of the approaches and outcomes. In a second step, studies in the field of explicit spatial location planning are reviewed in more detail, that is, in terms of their target criteria and the specialization of underlying analytical processes. One divergence of these approaches lies in the varying level of spatial planning, which could be crucial depending on the planning requirements. It is striking that almost all CS locating concepts are proposed for urban areas. Other constraints, such as the lack of extensive empirical EV traffic data for a better understanding of the driving behavior, are identified. This paper provides an overview of the CS models, a classification approach especially considering the problem's spatial dimension, and derives perspectives for further research. ARTICLE HISTORY

a b s t r a c tIntegrated spatial and energy planning has become a major field of interest to meet the current renewable energy share expansion and CO 2 emissions reduction targets. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) play a considerable role in supporting decision making in this field. Solar potential maps are a popular strategy to promote renewable energy generation through photovoltaic (PV) panel installations at city and municipal scales. They indicate the areas of roofs that would provide the maximum amount of energy in kW h per year. These are often used to suggest ''optimal locations'' for PV-panels and/or recommend system sizes to achieve a certain level of yearly autarchy. This approach is acceptable if PVs have only a minor share in the local energy supply system. However, increased PV-penetration can lead to instability of the local grid, create hazards for the security of the supply, and considerably escalate the storage and system back-up requirements. To obtain a proper understanding of the consequences for the local energy balance when selecting or rejecting a certain installation, examining the hourly and intra-hourly time series of the potential energy generation from PVs is necessary. This paper introduces a GIS-based procedure to estimate the potential PV-electricity generation time series for every roof-top section within a study area using open source software. This procedure is complemented by a series of strategies to select suitable PV-installations considering the time series analysis of supply and demand. Furthermore, thirteen technical indicators are considered to evaluate the PV-installation sets selected with every strategy. The capabilities of the procedure are tested using data from a German rural municipality. The proposed procedure constitutes an efficient and accessible way to assess solar potentials at the municipal scale and to design roof-top PV exploitation plans, which are more appropriate to fulfill the local energy requirements.

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