Flood-Resilient Communities: How We Can Encourage Adaptive Behaviour Through Smart Tools in Public–Private Interaction

Peter R Davids,Thomas Thaler

doi:10.17645/up.v6i3.4246

Abstract

To achieve a more flood-resilient society, it is essential to involve citizens. Therefore, new instruments, such as tailor-made advice for homeowners, are being developed to inform homeowners about adaptive strategies in building to motivate them to implement these measures. This article evaluates if public–private interactions, such as tailored advice, change risk behaviour and therefore increase flood resilience among homeowners. The article conducted semi-structured interviews with homeowners who had received advice as well as involved experts in two case study regions in Europe: Flanders in Belgium and Vorarlberg in Austria. The results show how the tailored advice helps homeowners who are already aware of flood risks and provides them with answers on how to adapt a house. However, the tool seems to lack the ability to inform and “recruit” new groups of homeowners who are not as familiar with flood risks. As such, this article concludes that this initiative has a relatively low impact in raising flood risk awareness among homeowners but may be more successful in serving as a tool that suggests tailored property-level flood risk adaptation measures for those who are already aware. Alternatively, more automated tailored information systems might be more efficient for unaware homeowners.

Highlights

Flood hazards that are caused due to exceptional rain‐ fall events lead to severe damage in European urban areas (Alfieri et al, 2015; Field et al, 2012), and climate models predict an increase of such events in the coming decades (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2018)
Smart tools to involve homeowners in flood risk manage‐ ment are being developed in many countries that include tailored expert advice
The results illustrate that homeowners become informed of risks and are encouraged to implement property level flood risk adaptation (PLFRA), as the advice meets the characteristics of the behavioural turn (Kuhlicke et al, 2020) as well as explaining the effectiveness of PLFRA, and the experts are able to support homeowners with tailored information

Summary

Introduction

A Behavioural Turn in Flood Risk ManagementFlood hazards that are caused due to exceptional rain‐ fall events lead to severe damage in European urban areas (Alfieri et al, 2015; Field et al, 2012), and climate models predict an increase of such events in the coming decades (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2018). Based on the principles of resilience (Fekete et al, 2020; Folke et al, 2010; Liao, 2012), govern‐ ments in the present day strive for a more holistic risk‐ based approach that includes uncertainties (Kuklicke & Demeritt, 2016), planning (Hartmann & Juepner, 2014), and the involvement of civil actors (Forrest et al, 2020; Seebauer & Babcicky, 2018) These new actors, such as homeowners, are becoming part of flood risk manage‐ ment as they can reduce their personal vulnerability (e.g., Kuhlicke et al, 2020; Mees et al, 2016; Rufat et al, 2020; Snel et al, 2020). New actors get involved and traditional strategies diversify with new approaches, strategies, and instruments in the field of flood risk management (Hegger et al, 2016)

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