Cities and flooding: Lessons in resilience from case studies of integrated urban flood risk management

Lamond, Jessica; Stanton-Geddes, Zuzana; Bloch, Robin; Proverbs, David

Abstract

Flooding can cause disruption and devastation in cities, with massive damage to livelihoods, property and urban infrastructure as recently experienced in New York City, Jakarta, Bangkok, Accra, Mississippi and Queensland. For cities in developing nations, unplanned urban expansion, poor infrastructure and services, inadequate drainage and weak institutional capacity can multiply the negative impact of flooding. In such circumstances, floods often affect informal settlements and bring the additional burden of diverting resources away from poverty alleviation and other development efforts. Preparing for future floods, which may become more frequent in the future, integrated flood risk management recognises that risk reduction which relies solely on engineered defences may be uneconomic, impractical or make flood risk worse under certain circumstances. Therefore authors advocate for a holistic and forward-looking approach to improve resilience of cities in which appropriate engineered measures are combined with non-structural mechanisms, land use planning, emergency preparedness and recovery planning. Decision-makers can use this approach as guidance in implementing balanced and robust solutions in flood risk management.
Funded by the World Bank / Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), the flagship report ‘Cities and Flooding: A Guide to Integrated Urban Flood Risk Management for the 21st Century’ was designed to provide operational assistance to policy-makers and technical specialists, particularly in the rapidly expanding cities and towns of the developing world, on how best to manage the risk of floods. Comprehensively dealing with available structural and non-structural measures, the handbook provides common guiding principles to building resilience to urban flooding. Over 50 case studies, carefully selected from extensive literature review, workshops and consultations, illustrate current practice, challenges, and lessons learnt from around the world. International and local workshops were held to test and disseminate the key findings and recommendations. A major objective of the research project was to develop a set of policy principles and practical recommendations, based on the case studies, literature and inputs from expert participants at the workshops, to support the implementation of integrated flood risk management through a structured, iterative and participatory process.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: CIB 2013 World Congress, Special Conference Session: Making Cities More Resilient
• Start Date: May 5, 2013
• End Date: May 9, 2013
• Publication Date: May 1, 2013
• Deposit Date: Oct 10, 2013
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 15, 2016
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: resilience, adaptive capacity, urban flood management
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/932401
• Additional Information: Title of Conference or Conference Proceedings : CIB 2013 World Congress, Special Conference Session: Making Cities More Resilient
• Contract Date: Nov 15, 2016