Informing River Basin Management on Flood and Drought Risks Taking Future Uncertainties into Account

Chapter
First Online:
Part of the The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry book series (HEC, volume 29)

Abstract

Severe dry periods (droughts) receive less attention than floods and storms in natural hazard risk assessments. This is remarkable as droughts (heat waves) cause the most casualties of all natural hazards in Europe. The combination of socio-economic developments and climate change poses a challenge to water managers to not only mitigate flood and drought probabilities but also consider measures that a priori alleviate the damage of extreme floods and droughts. This chapter describes how climate scenarios and socio-economic scenarios can be combined to assess future flood risks. Furthermore, several ways are explained of dealing with uncertainty in an approach that may inform river basin managers on flood and drought risks. Finally, an example of drought risk assessment is provided for the Netherlands. The chapter concludes that cooperation with social and economic sciences is a prerequisite for a strategy that best informs river basin management on flood and drought risks. By applying such a strategy, river basin management could involve information on flood and drought risks to assess urgency and priority of a priori risk reduction measures.

Keywords

Drought risk Flood risk River basin management Scenarios 
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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Institute for Environmental StudiesVrije Universiteit AmsterdamAmsterdamThe Netherlands
  2. 2.Twynstra GuddeAmersfoortThe Netherlands

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