The Cork City flood of November 2009: Lessons for flood risk management and climate change adaptation at the urban scale

Jeffers, J.M

doi:10.1080/00750778.2011.615283

Cited by 20 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…Although flooding is not unusual in Cork, the November 2009 flood was described by local officials and residents as the worst river flood to strike the city for many years (Jeffers, 2011a). It resulted from the release of large volumes of water from the Inniscarra Dam in the aftermath of heavy rainfall.…”

Section: Ireland's Coastal Citiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While they have been operated to successfully control small floods in the past (Fitzpatrick and Bree, 2001), there have also been several occasions when large floods have exceeded the capacity of the dams to regulate them (Jeffers, 2011a).…”

Section: Ireland's Coastal Citiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This flood and subsequent river flooding in November of the same year prompted reviews of policy and practice at both local and national levels. there are doubts about the success of this change (Jeffers, 2013a(Jeffers, , 2011a) and challenges to its implementation remain (Scott, el. al., 2013).…”

Section: Ireland's Coastal Citiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The research on which this paper is based formed part of a larger project which investigated vulnerability to flood hazards and climate change adaptation in Ireland's coastal cities (Jeffers, 2013a(Jeffers, , 2013b(Jeffers, , 2011a(Jeffers, , 2011b. This wider project drew on a range of data collection methods including semi-structured interviews with local decisionmakers and an analysis of records of decision-making such as the minutes of City It is recognised as inevitable that the record produced does not include every flood experienced in each city as some events may not have been reported, may not be included in the www.floodmaps.ie database or may not have been returned by the search function of The Irish Times database.…”

Section: Historical Evidence For Large Floodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Environmental knowledge and human experience: using a historical analysis of flooding in Ireland to challenge contemporary risk narratives and develop creative policy alternatives

Jeffers¹

2014

Environmental Hazards

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Section: Ireland's Coastal Citiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Ireland's Coastal Citiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Ireland's Coastal Citiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Historical Evidence For Large Floodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Environmental knowledge and human experience: using a historical analysis of flooding in Ireland to challenge contemporary risk narratives and develop creative policy alternatives

Jeffers¹

2014

Environmental Hazards

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“…Reliance on charitable organizations, outside the formal humanitarian aid provided, was a source of government-directed anger from many Galway respondents and seen as a failure of government to meet the needs of the most vulnerable. The government's response in Ireland has been widely critiqued, fostering resentment and leading to litigation: affected Irish citizens initiated legal proceedings against authorities 23,24 . Liability has not been so critically contested in Cumbria where there are processes to help ensure that charitable organizations work with formal institutions both during and following flood events (such as Cumbria's Council for Voluntary Services) 25 .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Changing social contracts in climate-change adaptation

et al. 2012

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Risks from extreme weather events are mediated through state, civil society and individual action 1,2 . We propose evolving social contracts as a primary mechanism by which adaptation to climate change proceeds. We use a natural experiment of policy and social contexts of the UK and Ireland affected by the same meteorological event and resultant flooding in November 2009. We analyse data from policy documents and from household surveys of 356 residents in western Ireland and northwest England. We find significant differences between perceptions of individual responsibility for protection across the jurisdictions and between perceptions of future risk from populations directly affected by flooding events. These explain differences in stated willingness to take individual adaptive actions when state support retrenches. We therefore show that expectations for state protection are critical in mediating impacts and promoting longer-term adaptation. We argue that making social contracts explicit may smooth pathways to effective and legitimate adaptation.It is clear that climate change will not be experienced as a smooth change in mean conditions, but as a series of extreme weather events, possibly leading to crises in policy and planning. These can offer opportunities for investment and legislation while there is public support and attention 3,4 . Understanding how events shape the direction of adaptation requires a theory of the process of change.Social contract theory has a long history in political philosophy. It explains how governments and responsibility evolve over time as emerging risks pose challenges to the established consensus concerning the role of the state. Social contract theory is contested: there are profound debates on the balance of power between civil society and the state. Recent applications suggest that adaptation and resilience could lead to renegotiation of social contracts because of the co-evolving nature of risks and multi-actor influences on change 5 .

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Dammed if you do, dammed if you don't: The impact of economic rationalist imperatives on the adaptive capacity of public infrastructure in Brisbane, Australia and Cork, Ireland

Tangney

2020

Env Pol Gov

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This paper presents a comparative analysis of catchment management dams in Cork, Ireland and Brisbane, Australia to demonstrate how interactions between municipal government and expert advisors for public infrastructure administration can constrain community climate adaptation. The analysis highlights how neoliberal economic rationalism can appropriate public value choice under the guise of technocratic expertise. Experts are often considered responsible agents for the effective administration of public infrastructure, even when ostensibly technical decisions concerning infrastructure management seem to demand normative, political input. Technocratic administration arising from economic rationalist priorities can thereby exacerbate the hazards presented by climate variability and advancing climate change. Climate risk managers in both cases over-relied on operating protocols and the expertise of engineers to administer public infrastructure in pursuit of economic priorities. When operating protocols proved insufficient in the face of climate extremes, however, blame was assigned to experts despite their making all available attempts to avert disaster. Through analysis of these cases, the paper discusses the need for normative transparency in expert-led public administration and better integration of multi-level governance for climate resilience when pursuing economic rationalist imperatives.

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The Cork City flood of November 2009: Lessons for flood risk management and climate change adaptation at the urban scale

Cited by 20 publications

References 62 publications

Environmental knowledge and human experience: using a historical analysis of flooding in Ireland to challenge contemporary risk narratives and develop creative policy alternatives

Environmental knowledge and human experience: using a historical analysis of flooding in Ireland to challenge contemporary risk narratives and develop creative policy alternatives

Changing social contracts in climate-change adaptation

Dammed if you do, dammed if you don't: The impact of economic rationalist imperatives on the adaptive capacity of public infrastructure in Brisbane, Australia and Cork, Ireland

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