Integrated methodologies for flood risk management practice in European pilot sites

Flood risk management is a societal challenge: It encompasses the analysis of risk generation in complex human-environment systems, the evaluation of the tolerability of risk as well as the design and implementation of risk reduction measures. Multiple actors are involved in the process of collecting information, decision making and acting. Science may support this endeavour by specific natural and social science investigations and software tool developments. The complex levels of flood risk management, however, require a comprehensive understanding of the entire issues and special methodologies for the emergent tasks.
The paper presents results from developing and testing integrated methodologies to support flood risk management in European pilot sites of the FLOODsite project. Based on a conceptual framework of the societal flood risk management it illustrates how significant advances can be made by context-specific integrated approaches. The framework describes flood risk management from the perspective of multiple decision makers and experts who are responsible for dealing with flood risk as a real-world problem and related management tasks. Moreover, it explicates the management process itself considering the context and process dimension in addition to the contents.