Abstract
Abstract. Sustainable flood risk management encompasses the implementation of nature-based solutions to mitigate flood risk. These measures include the establishment of land use types with a high (e.g., forest patches) or low (e.g., sealed surfaces) water retention and infiltration capacity at strategic locations in the catchment. This paper presents an approach for assessing the relative impact of such land use changes on economic flood damages and associated risk. This spatially explicit approach integrates a reference situation, a flood damage model, and a rainfall-runoff model considering runoff re-infiltration and propagation to determine relative flood risk mitigation or increment related to the implementation of land use change scenarios. The applicability of the framework is illustrated for a 4800 ha undulating catchment in the region of Flanders, Belgium, by assessing the afforestation of 187.5 ha (3.9 %), located mainly in the valleys, and sealing of 187.5 ha, situated mainly at higher elevations. These scenarios result in a risk reduction of 57 % (EUR 100 000) for the afforestation scenario and a risk increment of <1 % (EUR ∼ 500) for the sealing scenario.
Highlights
River flooding is a natural process but poses a significant socioeconomic hazard, causing human distress and damage to properties and infrastructure
Flood risk management aims at minimizing flood risk, which is defined by the probability of a flood event and its potential negative consequences, termed flood damages
The water depths before and after land use change are combined with socioeconomic information in a flood damage model to determine the corresponding flood damages
Summary
River flooding is a natural process but poses a significant socioeconomic hazard, causing human distress and damage to properties and infrastructure. In Europe, floods caused approximately EUR 147 billion in economic damage between 1980 and 2019 (EEA, 2021). The economic losses associated with flood events have been on the increase in the past decades (since 1970), partly due to changing weather patterns (IPCC, 2014) but mainly driven by socioeconomic developments such as population growth, increasing wealth and ongoing urbanization in flood-prone areas (Barredo, 2009; Bouwer, 2011; Koks et al, 2014). The increasing flood losses prompted a shift in flood management in Europe from a flood prevention policy to flood risk management policy (EEA, 2017), as detailed in the European Flood Directive (Directive 2007/60/EC, 2007). Flood risk is an expression of the expected flood damages over a certain period of time, e.g., the expected annual damages (Bubeck et al, 2011; Grossi and Kunreuther, 2005; Merz et al, 2010; de Moel et al, 2015)
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