Collaborative Planning in Adaptive Flood Risk Management under Climate Change

K. Söderholm (), M. Pihlajamäki, T. Dubrovin, N. Veijalainen, B. Vehviläinen and M. Marttunen
Additional contact information
K. Söderholm: Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE)
M. Pihlajamäki: University of Oulu
T. Dubrovin: Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE)
N. Veijalainen: Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE)
B. Vehviläinen: Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE)
M. Marttunen: Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE)

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), 2018, vol. 32, issue 4, No 12, 1383-1397

Abstract: Abstract Flood risk management (FRM) is moving towards more proactive and collaborative direction to enable adaptation to changing conditions. We present a case study on collaborative planning process, which contributed to the development of adaptive FRM in one of the largest river basins in Finland. The focus was on the possibility and acceptability of using large regulated lakes as storage for flood water in an extreme flood event to decrease flood damage at the downstream riverside towns. We defined an extreme flood event that would cause dramatic flood damage and developed tools for simulating the event with alternative regulation strategies using Watershed Simulation and Forecasting System (WSFS). We organized a stakeholder event to demonstrate the alternative lake regulation strategies, their socio-economic consequences, and to discuss their acceptability. We found that storing flood water in the lakes above the regulation limits and preparing for winter floods in advance by lowering the lakes in the autumn can minimize the total damage in the target area. The majority of stakeholders considered these actions acceptable in an extreme flood event, regardless of deliberately induced flooding of areas where no floods have occurred for over 50 years. However, lowering the lakes in the autumn on annual basis gained less support. We emphasize the importance of deliberations on the FRM procedures and responsibilities in extreme flood events with the stakeholders in advance to increase adaptive capacity and legitimacy of decisions.

Keywords: Stakeholder engagement; Extreme flood; Simulation; Damage minimization; Uncertainty approximation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11269-017-1875-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:waterr:v:32:y:2018:i:4:d:10.1007_s11269-017-1875-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11269

DOI: 10.1007/s11269-017-1875-3

Access Statistics for this article

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) is currently edited by G. Tsakiris

More articles in Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) from Springer, European Water Resources Association (EWRA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().