Veinte años de protección de cauces en el litoral de la Región de Murcia (1994-2014). Evaluación de la eficiencia de las medidas de Ordenación del Territorio

Who can you trust? Implications of institutional vulnerability in flood exposure along the Spanish Mediterranean coast

“…In the last period, the municipal plans adapted to the 2008 Land Law, where more restrictive construction measures concerning floods were established. However, as we mentioned above, the effect was not that expected, because the FRM adopted (mainly structural measures) have serious shortcomings and had not prevented the occupation of flood-prone areas, especially in the coastal municipalities of south-eastern Spain (Pérez et al, 2015b).…”

“…This is especially the case in Murcia and Castellón, where, despite the low PIV, the FIV values represent a considerable increase in the exposed area. Unlike in the province of Valencia, plans against flooding have had little effect in these provinces (Olcina, 2010b;Pérez et al, 2015b). This situation takes on worrying proportions since, according to the mean rate of urban growth in floodprone zones of the study area (8.9%/year) (Pérez et al, 2015a) and in the percentage of land destined for public use (24-33% of residential land since 2008 Land Law), in less than 20 years the built up area exposed flooding will increase by 50%, which may double in less than 40 years.…”

Are Floods Becoming a More Expensive Hazard? A Damages Review of the Southeastern Spanish Coast (1996–2016)

“…In this regard, although each province is embedded in a main river basin (the Júcar basin for Alicante and Segura for Murcia), the hydrological network is made up of several small watersheds (Figure 2) with torrential behavior and a responsibility for a multitude of flash floods [2,34,38,42]. Additionally, due to the fact that the hydrographic system is dry most of the year (except in certain seasons [43] when rainfall peaks occur, see Figure 3) and it is also regulated by several hydraulic infrastructures [20,44], the inhabitants have developed a false sense of security [9,45] that is faithfully reflected in their flood risk perception [27,28,30]. In fact, in spite of the fact that the population living in this area perceives flooding as an important issue at the municipal level [41,46,47], it is not considered to be the main environmental problem that they face [8,41,[48][49][50].…”

“…In further detail, regarding the asset damage, the results highlight a very important aspect related to both flood mitigation measures' effectiveness and their social perception. In this regard, although the number of fatalities has decreased [1][2][3]37], neither hydraulic infrastructures nor spatial planning policies have been able to contain or reduce damages on civil properties [9,14,20,44]. In fact, considering the mean flood damages values recorded, these data faithfully reflect the permissiveness of construction patterns in flood-prone areas during the last decades [9,14,20,50], because dwellings losses have increased more (418%) than the other assets insured (Kruskal-Wallis H and Wilcoxon signed-rank test, p-value < 0.05).…”

“…In addition, each plan has not had the same degree of success; thereby, although in the province of Alicante the PATRICOVA was able to reduced exposure [9,30] by reclassifying as "non-urban land" some 7300 ha. of floodable areas previously considered "developable land" [41], the different plans defined for the Murcia province had a minimal effect [20,44]. Therefore, regardless of publication date, it should also be highlighted that the effectiveness in each province is more related to the plans' consideration by local and regional planners than to the number of policies approved.…”