Abstract
Abstract. Decision makers in fluvial flood risk management increasingly acknowledge that they have to prepare for extreme events. Flood risk is the most common basis on which to compare flood risk-reducing strategies. To take uncertainties into account the criteria of robustness and flexibility are advocated as well. This paper discusses the added value of robustness as an additional decision criterion compared to single-value flood risk only. We do so by quantifying flood risk and system robustness for alternative system configurations of the IJssel River valley in the Netherlands. We found that robustness analysis has added value in three respects: (1) it does not require assumptions on current and future flood probabilities, since flood consequences are shown as a function of discharge; (2) it shows the sensitivity of the system to varying discharges; and (3) it supports a discussion on the acceptability of flood damage. We conclude that robustness analysis is a valuable addition to flood risk analysis in support of long-term decision-making on flood risk management.
Highlights
Flood disasters continue to show that flood protection cannot provide a 100 % safety
The main purpose of this paper was to explore the added value of robustness criteria compared to single-value flood risk, when evaluating alternative flood risk system configurations. We consider it added value when different insights are obtained with a robustness analysis in comparison to those obtained from a flood risk analysis
Such a comparison was done by Klijn et al (2014), who show that robustness analysis may lead to a changed priority setting of alternative flood risk management strategies
Summary
Flood disasters continue to show that flood protection cannot provide a 100 % safety. Other examples include the flooding of Queensland, Australia in January 2011, and the flooding of Bangkok, Thailand in October 2011. These disasters emphasize the inherent variability of hazards, and the often devastating impact of beyonddesign events. The question is how decision-makers and planners should deal with this natural variability in the management of their system. The traditional way to deal with climate variability is riskbased decision-making. In flood risk management, flood risk is the key criterion for decision-making, which is often balanced with the investment cost of the strategy. There are two reasons why flood risk may not suffice
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