Review of the flood risk management system in Germany after the major flood in 2013

By A. Thieken, Sarah E. Kienzler, Heidi Kreibich, C. Kuhlicke, Michael Kunz, B. Mühr, Meike Müller, A. Otto, T. Petrow, Sebastian Pisi and 1 more. 2016

157 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Widespread flooding in June 2013 caused damage costs of €6 to 8 billion in Germany, and awoke many memories of the floods in August 2002, which resulted in total damage of €11.6 billion and hence was the most expensive natural hazard event in Germany up to now. The event of 2002 does, however, also mark a reorientation toward an integrated flood risk management system in Germany. Therefore, the flood of 2013 offered the opportunity to review how the measures that politics, administration, and civil society have implemented since 2002 helped to cope with the flood and what still needs to be done to achieve effective and more integrated flood risk management. The review highlights considerable improvements on many levels, in particular (1) an increased consideration of flood hazards in spatial planning and urban development, (2) comprehensive property-level mitigation and preparedness measures, (3) more effective flood warnings and improved coordination of disaster response, and (4) a more targeted maintenance of flood defense systems. In 2013, this led to more effective flood management and to a reduction of damage. Nevertheless, important aspects remain unclear and need to be clarified. This particularly holds for balanced and coordinated strategies for reducing and overcoming the impacts of flooding in large catchments, cross-border and interdisciplinary cooperation, the role of the general public in the different phases of flood risk management, as well as a transparent risk transfer system. Recurring flood events reveal that flood risk management is a continuous task. Hence, risk drivers, such as climate change, land-use changes, economic developments, or demographic change and the resultant risks must be investigated at regular intervals, and risk reduction strategies and processes must be reassessed as well as adapted and implemented in a dialogue with all stakeholders.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Sociology and Political Science, Water Science and Technology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e67d20d012cac0f7065f2b9c3e430e18a9de9fb5

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Global and Planetary Change

1. C. Kuhlicke
2. Heidi Kreibich
3. P. Bubeck
4. T. Grothmann
5. Jeroen C. J. H. Aerts

In Sociology and Political Science

1. A. Heidenreich
2. C. Kuhlicke
3. C. Begg
4. Heidi Kreibich
5. P. Bubeck
6. S. Bamberg
7. T. Grothmann
8. Heesup Han

Citations in the corpus

• The behavioral turn in flood risk management, its assumptions and potential implications (2020, background): “Flood risk management (FRM) has undergone considerable changes in recent years (e.g., Bubeck et al., 2017a; Thieken et al., 2016b).”