Discussion & Recommendations

Abstract

The proposed methodology creates opportunities for designers to actively participate in debates concerning the location, layer, and scale of flood risk management interventions, resulting in a more integrated design approach. The systematic approach and the strong connection to variables and data sets provides a framework that makes it easier to communicate designers’ propositions from a spatial point of view to engineers and facilitates interdisciplinary cooperation. The developed sub-method for evaluating interventions at different flood risk levels, to shift flood risk management interventions to the most suitable locations, offers a framework for developing a combined probability and consequence reduction strategy. This method can become a valuable tool for strategy development and decision making in so-called multi-layered flood risk management approaches, in which interventions regarding the probability and the consequential damage of a flood are combined. Multi-layered safety approaches have often been referred to in flood risk management debates in the Netherlands, but so far, consistent methods for achieving a balanced probability and consequence reduction strategy have not been put in place.