Flood Risk Mapping At The Local Scale: Concepts and Challenges

Merz, Bruno; Thieken, A. H.; Gocht, Martin

doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-4200-3_13

Cited by 285 publications

(253 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Vulnerability is an analysing element of exposure, susceptibility and resilience of any coastal system at hazard. Vulnerability index captures a zooming in view, which helps in assessing aspects Therefore, not only politicians, but also decision-makers need such indices, the standardised vulnerability indices are helping in assessing and monitoring the ''elements at risk'' (Merz et al 2007). This need, the indices, involves a range of subjective decisions, the choice of indicators for example, but if the vulnerability concept is well defined and clarified, the evaluation and interpretation of composite indices will bring us the understanding of where to mitigate risk and where to focus investments.…”

Section: The Overall Coastal City Flood Vulnerability Indexmentioning

confidence: 99%

A flood vulnerability index for coastal cities and its use in assessing climate change impacts

2012

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Worldwide, there is a need to enhance our understanding of vulnerability and to develop methodologies and tools to assess vulnerability. One of the most important goals of assessing coastal flood vulnerability, in particular, is to create a readily understandable link between the theoretical concepts of flood vulnerability and the day-to-day decision-making process and to encapsulate this link in an easily accessible tool. This article focuses on developing a Coastal City Flood Vulnerability Index (CCFVI) based on exposure, susceptibility and resilience to coastal flooding. It is applied to nine cities around the world, each with different kinds of exposure. With the aid of this index, it is demonstrated which cities are most vulnerable to coastal flooding with regard to the system's components, that is, hydro-geological, socio-economic and politico-administrative. The index gives a number from 0 to 1, indicating comparatively low or high coastal flood vulnerability, which shows which cities are most in need of further, more detailed investigation for decision-makers. Once its use to compare the vulnerability of a range of cities under current conditions has been demonstrated, it is used to study the impact of climate change on the vulnerability of these cities over a longer timescale. The results show that CCFVI provides a means of obtaining a broad overview of flood vulnerability and the effect of possible adaptation options. This, in turn, will allow for the direction of resources to more in-depth investigation of the most promising strategies.

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Section: The Overall Coastal City Flood Vulnerability Indexmentioning

confidence: 99%

A flood vulnerability index for coastal cities and its use in assessing climate change impacts

2012

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“…It is well known that maps are valuable tools for representing the spatial distribution of flood hazard, vulnerability or risk (see below) as they provide a more direct and stronger impression than any other form of presentation (Merz et al, 2007;Leedal et al, 2010). Flood-plain maps can be classified into three categories (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flood-plain mapping: a critical discussion of deterministic and probabilistic approaches

Baldassarre

Schumann

Bates

et al. 2010

Hydrological Sciences Journal

241

196

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. (2010) Flood-plain mapping: a critical discussion of deterministic and probabilistic approaches. Hydrol. Sci. J. 55(3), 364-376.Abstract Different methodologies for flood-plain mapping are analysed and discussed by comparing deterministic and probabilistic approaches using hydrodynamic numerical solutions. In order to facilitate the critical discussion, state-of-art techniques in the field of flood inundation modelling are applied to a specific test site (River Dee, UK). Specifically, different flood-plain maps are derived for this test site. A first map is built by applying an advanced deterministic approach: use of a fully two-dimensional finite element model (TELEMAC-2D), calibrated against a historical flood extent, to derive a 1-in-100 year flood inundation map. A second map is derived by using a probabilistic approach: use of a simple raster-based inundation model (LISFLOOD-FP) to derive an uncertain flood extent map predicting the 1-in-100 year event conditioned on the extent of the 2006 flood. The flood-plain maps are then compared and the advantages and disadvantages of the two different approaches are critically discussed.

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“…The impact of floods on society is quantified by its vulnerability. Usually, vulnerability is expressed by the exposure of people and assets to floods, and by the susceptibility of these elements at risk to suffer from flood damage (e.g., Merz and Thieken, 2004). Comprehensive risk assessments that take into account the hazard and the vulnerability aspect of flood risk are gaining more and more attention in the fields of flood design and flood risk management.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantification of uncertainties in flood risk assessments

Apel¹,

Merz²,

Thieken³

2008

International Journal of River Basin Management

167

165

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By a common definition, flood risk assessments are comprised of two parts: a hazard and vulnerability assessment. The hazard assessment investigates the extent and magnitude of usually large flood events, which are associated to a certain exceedance probability, whereas the vulnerability part assesses the impact of the flooding on specified targets, e.g., building, people or infrastructure. Being inherently speculative flood risk assessments should always be accompanied by an uncertainty assessment in order to assist consequent decision properly. In this paper a dynamic-probabilistic method is proposed, which enables a cumulated flood risk assessment of a complete river reach considering dike failures at all dike locations. The model uses simple but computational efficient modules to simulate the complete process chain of flooding. These modules are embedded into a Monte Carlo framework thus enabling a risk assessment which is physically based thus mapping the real flooding process, and which is also probabilistic and not based on scenarios. The model also provides uncertainty estimates by quantifying various epistemic uncertainty sources of the hazard as well as the vulnerability part in a second layer of Monte Carlo simulations. These uncertainty estimates are associated to defined return intervals of the model outputs, i.e., the derived flood frequencies at the end of the reach and the risk curves for the complete reach, thus providing valuable information for the interpretation of the results. By separating single uncertainty sources a comparison of the contribution of different uncertainty sources to the overall predictive uncertainty in terms of derived flood frequencies and monetary risks could be performed. This revealed that the major uncertainties are extreme value statistics, resp. the length of the data series used and the discharge-stage relation used for the transformation of discharge into water levels in the river.

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Flood Risk Mapping At The Local Scale: Concepts and Challenges

Cited by 285 publications

References 24 publications

A flood vulnerability index for coastal cities and its use in assessing climate change impacts

A flood vulnerability index for coastal cities and its use in assessing climate change impacts

Flood-plain mapping: a critical discussion of deterministic and probabilistic approaches

Quantification of uncertainties in flood risk assessments

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