Flood Resilience of Private Properties

Flood Resilience of Private Properties examines the division and balance of responsibilities between the public and the private when discussing flood resilience of private properties.

Flooding is an expensive climate-related disaster and a threat to urban life. Continuing development in flood-prone zones compound the risks. Protecting all properties to the same standards is ever more challenging. Research has focused on improved planning and adapting publicly-owned infrastructure such as streets, evacuation routes, and retention ponds. However, damages often happen on private land. To realize a flood-resilient city, owners of privately-owned residential houses also need to act. Measures such as mobile barriers and backwater valves or avoiding vulnerable uses in basements can make homes more flood-resilient. But private owners may be unaware of flooding risks or may lack the means and knowledge to act. Incentives may be insufficient, while fragmented or unclear property rights and responsibilities entrench inertia. The challenge is motivating homeowners to take steps. Political and societal systems influence the action citizens are prepared to take and what they expect their governments to do. The responsibility for implementing such measures is shared between the public and the private domain in different degrees in different countries.

This book will be of great interest to scholars of water law, property rights, flood risk management and climate adaptation. This book was originally published as a special issue of Water International.

Autorentext

Thomas Hartmann is Associate Professor at Wageningen University, the Netherlands, and he teaches at J.E.P. University Ústí and Laben, Czechia, and Bonn University, Germany. He combines an engineering perspective with socio-political approaches to flood risk management and land policies and has published numerous papers, books and special issues on these topics.

Willemijn van Doorn-Hoekveld is Assistant Professor at the Utrecht Centre for Water, Oceans and Sustainability Law, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She does research in public law, water law and liability law, where she focuses on flood resilience and recovery.

Helena F.M.W. van Rijswick is Full Professor of European and Dutch Water Law and director of the Centre for Water, Oceans and Sustainability Law at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She focuses on water law within the broader field of environmental, spatial planning and nature conservation law from a European, constitutional, and administrative legal and interdisciplinary perspective.

Tejo Spit is Full Professor in Urban and Regional Planning at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. He specializes in land policy, planning methodology, infrastructure planning and administrative aspects of spatial planning.

Inhalt

Introduction: Increasing ood risk asks for new approaches * Thomas Hartmann, Willemijn van Doorn-Hoekveld, Marleen van Rijswick and Tejo Spit

• 1. The levee effect along the Jamuna River in Bangladesh * Md Ruknul Ferdous, Anna Wesselink, Luigia Brandimarte, Giuliano Di Baldassarre and Md Mizanur Rahmanf
• 2. Managing flood risk in shrinking cities: dilemmas for urban development from the Central European perspective * Pavel RaSka, Monika Stehlíková, Kristýna Rybová and Tereza Aubrechtová
• 3. The effects of tailor-made flood risk advice for homeowners in Flanders, Belgium * Peter Davids, Luuk Boelens and Barbara Tempels
• 4. More than a one-size-fits-all approach - tailoring flood risk communication to plural residents' perspectives * Karin A. W. Snel, Patrick A. Witte, Thomas Hartmann and Stan C. M. Geertman
• 5. Deconstructing the legal framework for flood protection in Austria: individual and state responsibilities from a planning perspective * Magdalena Rauter, Arthur Schindelegger, Sven Fuchs and Thomas Thaler
• 6. Too much water, not enough water: planning and property rights considerations for linking flood management and groundwater recharge * Thomas Jacobson
• 7. Dealing with distributional effects of flood risk management in China. Compensation mechanisms in flood retention areas * L. Dai, W. J. van Doorn-Hoekveld, R. Y. Wang and H. F. M. W. van Rijswick
• 8. Sticks and carrots for reducing property-level risks from floods: an EU-US comparative perspective * C. B. R. Suykens, D. Tarlock, S. J. Priest, W. J. Doorn-Hoekveld and H. F. M. W. van Rijswick *