Abstract
Increasing urbanization and development along rivers, together with climate change, exacerbate future flood risk in Ecuador. Current policy strategies in the highlands greatly need improvement. Politicians must rethink if the governmental environmental institutions and inhabitants of the highlands are prepared to respond to future small- and large-scale flood episodes. The purpose of this paper is to identify the issues facing flood risk management (FRM) in the Ecuadorian highlands with a view to finding approaches for overcoming them. We focus on three specific concerns: an assessment of the deficiencies of current flood risk management, the development of diverse strategies to combat flooding, and the need for an overarching vision for future actions and research. These are presented within a theoretical framework together with the authors’ recommendations of adaptation options for Ecuador’s newly emerging flood challenges. Traditional and novel flood risk management approaches are required, including smart land-use planning, implementation of structural and non‐structural measures, coordinated water governance systems with public participation, and the development and improvement of resilience to flooding. Moreover, academic input is a fundamental component of FRM to fill current knowledge gaps regarding mountain floods. This article addresses further research developments that are required to articulate and enable targeted FRM. To our knowledge, no previous publication has specifically dealt with FRM issues in the Ecuadorian highlands, thus, an overview of the current status of FRM is necessary. It is hoped that the challenges associated with flood management discussed here can be addressed over time.
Highlights
Losses arising from flood impacts in Ecuadorian cities and rural areas in the coastal, highlands, and Amazon regions include fatalities, damage to infrastructure and agriculture, interruptions to business and education, along with negative impacts on long-term human health and welfare
Flooding events frequently occur in the low-lands along the coast (Galarza-Villamar et al, 2018), which are more densely populated than the highlands and Amazon regions
Flood risk management, which can be defined as a systematic process that integrates the full spectrum of management policies and processes from technical analysis to institutional arrangements, is necessary to reduce losses from mountain riverine floods
Summary
Losses arising from flood impacts in Ecuadorian cities and rural areas in the coastal, highlands, and Amazon regions include fatalities, damage to infrastructure and agriculture, interruptions to business and education, along with negative impacts on long-term human health and welfare. Mountain Riverine Floods in Ecuador of flood countermeasures along the coast. Flood risk management, which can be defined as a systematic process that integrates the full spectrum of management policies and processes from technical analysis to institutional arrangements, is necessary to reduce losses from mountain riverine floods. SENAGUA has performed a few studies on flood modeling and mapping at local scale in the Southern Andes of Ecuador for protection measures and land-use planning (SENAGUA, 2011, 2014). More effective FRM in Ecuador is required; efforts to improve FRM in Ecuadorian highlands have broad relevance due to its heterogeneity in topography, steep riverbed slopes, highly variable precipitation patterns (both spatial and temporal), and a poor hydrometeorological network. The aim of this article is to provide a review of the current state of FRM in the Andean mountain range of Ecuador. An agenda for future research on FRM in the Andean mountain range of Ecuador is suggested in order to fill the current knowledge gaps
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