STAR-FLOOD · STrengthening And Redesigning European FLOOD risk practices Towards appropriate and resilient flood risk governance arrangements

Urban regions in the EU face increasing but uncertain flood risks due to urbanization and the effects of climate change. In European (a.o. the Flood Risk Directive) and in national and regional policies, attempts are made to diversify and align different Flood Risk Strategies (FRSs). In our proposal, five such strategies are distinguished: risk prevention; flood defense; mitigation; preparation; and recovery. We assume that vulnerable urban agglomerations will be more resilient if multiple FRSs are applied simultaneously, linked together and aligned. At the same time, the application of a diverse cluster of FRSs has to be appropriate, i.e. attuned to the physical and social context. The latter asks for innovative Flood Risk Governance Arrangements (FRGAs). In the proposed program, insights from governance and legal scholars will be integrated and combined, leading to policy design principles for FRGAs as well as concrete recommendations for policy and law at the level of the EU, its member states, regional authorities, and public-private partnerships.Across different EU countries and regions, we expect to identify different mixes of FRSs. We will analyze, explain and evaluate the emergence and dominance of the FRGAs through which these FRSs are institutionally embedded. For this, a comparative analysis of FRGAs in six EU member states will be carried out. This analysis will reveal good practices, provide understanding of the resilience of FRSs as well as their appropriateness in different physical, social and legal contexts. The design principles thus derived, will be brought together in a design-oriented framework for ex-ante evaluation of FRGAs. As part of the program, various target group specific knowledge dissemination activities will be carried out, aimed at regional stakeholders, high level policymakers and EU officers. To this end, Grontmij, a consultancy company, and CEPRI (The European centre for flood risk prevention) have been included in the consortium, apart from universities in the six EU member states.