Urban Flood Management – less wet feet through collaboration
¨You only need a safe country if people find it attractive enough to live there. Vice versa, an attractive city is not liveable if you get ‘wet feet’ too often. To ensure that the Netherlands is a safe and attractive country to live, now and in 100 years time, we have to work together. More often administrations, research institutes, civilians and private enterprises see they need each other to come up with better solutions.¨ /Annemieke Nijhof, the Director General of Water Management, of the Dutch ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management.*
‘Collaborative’, ‘integrated’ and ‘innovative’ could all be titled ‘The usual buzzwords’. Probably, you are as tired as me of seeing those words being abused in hollow slogans. However, after having experienced such an approach in the Living with Water project Urban Flood Management Dordrecht , I use those words with much care, and when I do, with great excitement. Let me share my experience from supporting this project.
Igniting exciting discussions
The UFM project shows how policy-makers, industry and academia can collaborate to deal with increasing flood risk in urban areas. We facilitated the integration and interaction between different disciplines, organisations and people through what we call ‘design-centred research’. The discussions sparked when we put the actors around a scale model of what could be a new neighbourhood in a flood-prone area. Who would be liable for such a development? What would be the market value of properties? Would inhabitants experiment and value the dynamics of water positively? Or should they be afraid of ‘wet feet’? What about….? In this way, new insights in challenges and new, innovative solutions surfaced.UFM has brought valuable results: flood proof urban designs, insight in flood hazard and potential damage, and in legal and communication instruments. Also it has been a valuable learning experience for the participating persons (myself included) and organizations. We learned to speak each other’s language.
As circles on water
The impact has been significant. All participants have actively spread what they learnt. The Dutch national Delta Commission incorporated UFM knowledge and explicitly mentioned the UFM project in policy recommendations. Likewise, regional water safety policy development used UFM Dordrecht as a case study. Moreover, politicians and civilians were made aware of the challenges and solutions, and were even mobilized in the framework or as a consequence of this project. Finally, broad media coverage was obtained with the highlight being the visit of the Dutch Crown Prince.Expanding the UFM approach
Follow up activities include actual implementation in development projects. Our research continues in the recently approved Interreg 4b North Sea project, MARE: Managing Adaptive REsponses to changing flood risks in the North Sea Region. Together with partners in Germany, the United Kingdom and Norway the collaborative approach will be used to support the implementation of the Flood Directive. Logically, there are much more environmental and spatial challenges to face that could benefit from the approach described.
This way we honour the call of Annemieke Nijhof, the Director General of Water Management, of the Dutch ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management. As she put it in the preface of UFM’s final report (paraphrased): I would like to see this approach being broadly implemented. We, the Netherlands, should have the guts and will to keep on being frontrunners. Be inspired by this publication to work in a similar way to climate proof the Netherlands.
Here you can download the final reports in Dutch. An English summary will follow shortly. Information on the Living with Water programme can be obtained here.
