Flood risk management: cases studies in French Mediterranean area

Abstract

Abstract. For a long time, flood risk management in France was oriented around controlling the hazard with the installation of structural measures such as dikes. Since the 1990s, however, numerous events have shown that these measures are not always effective. As a result, institutions now consider that other actions, such as preventive measures, are possible. Risk management is based on public policies and involves a number of players, as well as the societies exposed to the risks. The goal of our study is to show the various orientations of risk management by looking at several examples from Mediterranean France, where flash floods are common, in particular using postevent analysis. Post-event observations let us evaluate the effectiveness of flood-management methods. Do public policies work, and do they have a real influence on reducing deaths and damage? Are individual measures overtaking collective ones? The main results of our study show that the event itself is more important in determining which measures are applied than public policies, which do not take into account local specificities.

e-Flooding: Crisis Management through Two Temporal Loops

“…In [13], authors studied the risk management related to flooding in Mediterranean France. Concerning flash floods, [9,10] propose a detailed overview of several flash floods, from a physical point of view but also from a societal and economic one.…”