Urban regions in the EU are faced with increasing flood risks due to urbanisation and the effects of climate change. Both developments are surrounded with large uncertainties. The STAR-FLOOD project focuses on analysing, explaining, evaluating and designing policies to better deal with flood risks from rivers in urban agglomerations across Europe. There are several initiatives in European (e.g. the Floods Directive) and in national and regional policies to diversify and align different Flood Risk Strategies (FRSs); five such strategies are distinguished in STAR-FLOOD: risk prevention; flood defence; mitigation; preparation; and recovery.
We start from the assumption that urban agglomerations vulnerable to flooding will be more resilient if multiple FRSs are applied simultaneously, are linked together and are aligned. At the same time, the application of a diverse cluster of FRSs has to be appropriate, i.e. attuned to the physical and social context. The latter requires innovative Flood Risk Governance Arrangements (FRGAs). In the proposed programme, insights from the fields of public administration and law will be integrated and combined. Across different EU countries and regions, we will identify different mixes of FRSs and analyse, explain and evaluate the emergence and dominance of the governance arrangements through which these strategies are institutionally embedded. This will be done through a comparative analysis of these FRGAs in six EU member states. With this analysis, we aim to identify good practices and to gain understanding of the resilience of these strategies as well as their appropriateness in different physical, social and legal contexts. The results of the programme are expected to lead to policy design principles for FRGAs and to implications for policy and law at the level of the EU, its member states, regional authorities, and public-private partnerships.
FHRC is part of an international consortium led by Utrecht University working on the project. We are leading Work Package 1: 'Problem analysis', as well as contributing to all other research Work Packages and conducting the UK case studies in London, Hull and Glasgow.
Work Package 1 Deliverable Reports are now available on the STAR-FLOOD website.
Funder:
European Commission FP7
Duration:
2012-2016
FHRC contact:
Sue Tapsell
