RESILIENCE AND FLOOD RISK MANAGEMENT A SYSTEMS APPROACH APPLIED TO LOWLAND RIVERS Cover: Flooding of a village in the Netherlands (Rijkswaterstaat – Meetkundige Dienst) RESILIENCE AND FLOOD RISK MANAGEMENT A SYSTEMS APPROACH APPLIED TO LOWLAND RIVERS PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Technische Universiteit Delft, op gezag van de Rector Magnificus prof. dr. ir. J.T. Fokkema, voorzitter van het College voor Promoties, in het openbaar te verdedigen op dinsdag 11 oktober 2005 om 13.00 uur door Karin Marianne DE BRUIJN landbouwkundig ingenieur geboren te Spijkenisse. Dit proefschrift is goedgekeurd door de promotor: Prof. ir. E. van Beek Samenstelling promotiecommissie: Rector Magnificus voorzitter Prof. ir. E. van Beek Technische Universiteit Delft, promotor Prof. C. Green Middlesex University Prof. dr. ir. H.J. De Vriend Technische Universiteit Delft Prof. dr. ir. N.C. van de Giesen Technische Universiteit Delft Dr. H. Middelkoop Universiteit Utrecht Dr. F. Klijn WL | Delft Hydraulics Dr. M. Kok Technische Universiteit Delft Prof. dr. ir. H.H.G. Savenije Technische Universiteit Delft, reservelid Dr. F. Klijn heeft als begeleider in belangrijke mate aan de totstandkoming van het proefschrift bijgedragen. This research has been supported by the IRMA•SPONGE umbrella programme within the framework of the INTERREG•IIC initiative of the European Union and by the Delft Cluster programme within the Dutch ICES funding with project number 06.01.02. The research has been carried out within the framework of the Netherlands Centre for River Studies (NCR). Published and distributed by: DUP Science DUP Science is an imprint of Delft University Press P.O. Box 98 2600 MG Delft Telephone: +31 15 2783254 Telefax: +31 15 2781661 Email: [email protected] ISBN 90•407•2599•3 Keywords: Resilience, flood risk management, lowland rivers, floods Copyright © 2005 by Karin de Bruijn All rights reserved. No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher: Delft University Press. Printed in the Netherlands. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thinking about flood risk management in the future, about the direction the Netherlands could move to and about what we could advise other countries is very interesting. I am, therefore, glad that I could do a PhD thesis related to long•term flood risk management strategies. However, after five years of hard work, I am also happy that I have now reached the stage in which I can write the acknowledgements, since it means that I have almost finished my thesis. I enjoyed doing my PhD research, because I had a lot of freedom to focus on the subjects I was interested in most, I had the opportunity to work closely with Msc students, and I could travel to different countries and work with different persons. I would like to thank all those who supported and assisted me during my PhD research. In the first place I wish to thank my promoter and co•promoter Prof. Eelco van Beek and Dr. Frans Klijn for initiating the project, our discussions and their willingness to read many versions of my chapters. I also would like to thank my steering group: Hans Middelkoop, Matthijs Kok, Huib de Vriend, Jos Dijkman, Martine Brinkhuis and Hendrik Buiteveld for their time, their ideas and the discussions we had. Furthermore, I would like to thank Colin Green, Clare Johnson, Lorraine McFadden and all the other members of the Flood Hazard Research Centre at Middlesex University, London, who received me very kindly and helped me clarifying my thoughts and showed me some of their approaches to the concepts of risk, vulnerability and uncertainties. I also would like to thank Kim Geheb, Chris Barlow, Ann Lund and Mr. Sok of the Mekong River Commission and Henrik Garsdal of DHI. They provided me with very useful information and ideas and enabled the case study on the Mekong River. Deynes Beijer, Rolf van der Veen (RIZA•RWS) and Siebolt Folkertsma (RWS– Directie Limburg) supported the Meuse case study by providing information and model schematisations and I appreciate their help. I also appreciate the work done by Minne Alderlieste and Emilie van Bemmel, MSc students of Delft University of Technology who worked on respectively the Mekong and Meuse case study. By discussing their work my own ideas became clearer. Furthermore, I would like to thank everybody who worked on the IRMA•Sponge ‘Living with Floods’ project in which I participated and of which I could use some results for the Rhine case study. I thank my room mates, especially Karen Meijer and Nathalie Asselman, for their ability to cope with a busy room mate who sometimes wanted quietness and at other times needed a chat. I also would like to thank all my colleagues at the Delft University of Technology and at WL | Delft Hydraulics for creating an enjoyable atmosphere at work. I worked on my PhD research for 5 years. In those years my private life changed a lot. When I started I lived in a house together with friends. Nowadays, I am married and I live together with my husband in a beautiful house in a ‘VINEX’ neighbourhood in Delfgauw, which is something I would not have believed if predicted 5 years ago. Within about 2 months I hope to be a mama, which is something I am really looking forward to. I am grateful to all my friends for still being my friends, although we did not meet as often as we wanted since I was too busy finishing my thesis. I am also grateful to my family for understanding the stress and for not asking too many questions about my thesis at moments that I did not want to talk about it. Finally, I would like to thank my husband and best friend Léon, who stood behind me, and who accompanied me during the travel over and along the Mekong River and Tonle Sap Lake. I look forward to spending much more time together in the coming years. i ii CONTENTS Summary..................................................................................................................................... 1 Samenvatting .............................................................................................................................. 7 1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 13 1.1 Background ................................................................................................................ 13 1.2 Objective and research questions............................................................................. 16 1.3 Definitions and focus of the research ....................................................................... 17 1.4 Research set•up .......................................................................................................... 17 1.5 Outline of this thesis................................................................................................... 18 2 Resilience in the context of flood risk management......................................................... 21 2.1 The resilience and resistance concepts..................................................................... 21 2.2 Flood risk management ............................................................................................. 24 2.2.1 Definition of flood risk management .................................................................... 24 2.2.2 Flood risk management as a service to the region ................................................ 25 2.2.3 Evaluation criteria for flood risk management strategies...................................... 28 2.3 Resilience and resistance in flood risk management .............................................. 31 2.3.1 The systems approach in flood risk management ................................................. 32 2.3.2 Definition of resilience and resistance of flood risk management systems .......... 33 2.3.3 Resilience and resistance strategies in flood risk management............................. 34 2.3.4 The relationship between resilience and important related concepts.................... 35 2.4 Reflection .................................................................................................................... 37 3 Quantifying resilience ....................................................................................................... 39 3.1 Introduction................................................................................................................ 39 3.2 Review of flood impacts and recovery ..................................................................... 40 3.2.1 Flood impacts ........................................................................................................ 40 3.2.2 Recovery from flood impacts................................................................................ 42 3.3 Towards indicators .................................................................................................... 46 3.3.1 Indicator requirements........................................................................................... 46 3.3.2 Existing resilience indicators for flood risk management..................................... 47 3.4 New indicators for resilience and resistance ........................................................... 48 3.4.1 Reaction indicators as resilience indicators .......................................................... 48 3.4.2 Amplitude