Flood Risk Management Strategies and Governance

This book points out why organisational or governance aspects are essential for implementing a broad and integrated flood risk management approach. It provides key conclusions on resilient, efficient and legitimate flood risk governance arrangements in vulnerable urban areas in Europe. These are translated into concrete recommendations and good practices that can give you new insights and inspire you to improve policies and practices.

The book is a way of spreading the results of the EU 7th Framework Project STAR-FLOOD. The project investigated strategies for dealing with flood risks in 18 vulnerable urban regions in 6 European countries: England, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden. STAR-FLOOD focused on governance aspects, from a combined public administration and legal perspective.

Dr. Tom Raadgever is consultant in the field of Water and Flood Risk Management at Europe’s leading engineering and architecture consultancy Sweco. During his career as researcher and consultant, Tom gained experience in water and flood risk management, governance and project- and process management in the Netherlands, Europe and South-East Asia. He has a strong drive to offer solutions to complex delta problems by translating natural and social science to policy and concrete projects. As coordinator Knowledge dissemination & networking in the EU FP7 project STAR-FLOOD, Tom was main author of the Practitioner’s Guide that is described in Part II of this book.

Dr. Dries Hegger is an assistant professor in regional water and climate governance at Utrecht University’s Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development. His research contributes to the study of modes of environmental governance and their relationship with sustainable development. He has carried out projects on water governance, flood risk governance, knowledge co-creation in regional climate adaptation projects, relationships between water companies and consumers and on innovation in wastewater management systems in a Western context. The Environmental Governance section at which Dr. Hegger is employed coordinated the EU FP7 project STAR-FLOOD, the findings of which are presented in this book.