Delineating flexibility, resilience, and robustness for multifunctional flood defences

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Flora Anvarifar, Chris Zevenbergen, Wil Thissen

Monday 29 june 2015

17:45 - 17:48h at North America (level 0)

Themes: (T) Flood risk management and adaptation, (ST) Adaptation measures, Poster pitches

Parallel session: Poster pitch: 2I: FloodRisk - Adaption

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Socio-economic and climatic dynamics are driving the need to rethink how the flood management measures should be developed and maintained. Uncertainties about the extent and impacts of driving forces necessitate taking decision making approaches that can cope with variability and change. Among various methods of addressing uncertainty, flexibility, robustness and resilience are put forward in the literature as ways of dealing with uncertainty and unpredictability. However, there are ambiguity and overlaps in definitions across various publications resulting in confusion to specify and apply them. In order to develop a clear construct for the field of flood management, the definitions of flexibility, robustness, and resilience are developed. Various examples are then applied to show how each approach can be operationalized in the context of multifunctional flood defences. Each case study exemplifies how multifunctionality can help in achieving flexibility, robustness, resilience or the combination of them.