Integrated urban flood risk assessment – adapting a multicriteria approach to a city
Open Access
- 17 November 2009
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Copernicus GmbH in Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences
- Vol. 9 (6), 1881-1895
- https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-9-1881-2009
Abstract
Flood risk assessment is an essential part of flood risk management. As part of the new EU flood directive it is becoming increasingly more popular in European flood policy. Particularly cities with a high concentration of people and goods are vulnerable to floods. This paper introduces the adaptation of a novel method of multicriteria flood risk assessment, that was recently developed for the more rural Mulde river basin, to a city. The study site is Leipzig, Germany. The "urban" approach includes a specific urban-type set of economic, social and ecological flood risk criteria, which focus on urban issues: population and vulnerable groups, differentiated residential land use classes, areas with social and health care but also ecological indicators such as recreational urban green spaces. These criteria are integrated using a "multicriteria decision rule" based on an additive weighting procedure which is implemented into the software tool FloodCalc urban. Based on different weighting sets we provide evidence of where the most flood-prone areas are located in a city. Furthermore, we can show that with an increasing inundation extent it is both the social and the economic risks that strongly increase.Keywords
This publication has 12 references indexed in Scilit:
- Water Resources and Land Use and Cover in a Humid Region: The Southeastern United StatesJournal of Environmental Quality, 2011
- Vulnerability assessment and protective effects of coastal vegetation during the 2004 Tsunami in Sri LankaNatural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, 2009
- Determinants of floodplain forest development illustrated by the example of the floodplain forest in the District of LeipzigForest Ecology and Management, 2009
- Mapping urban risk: Flood hazards, race, & environmental justice in New YorkApplied Geography, 2009
- Urban social vulnerability assessment with physical proxies and spatial metrics derived from air- and spaceborne imagery and GIS dataNatural Hazards, 2008
- Natural and imposed injustices: the challenges in implementing ‘fair’ flood risk management policy in EnglandThe Geographical Journal, 2007
- Flood Induced Heavy Metal and Arsenic Contamination of Elbe River Floodplain SoilsActa Hydrochimica et Hydrobiologica, 2005
- Integrated ecological, economic and social impact assessment of alternative flood control policies in the NetherlandsEcological Economics, 2004
- Vulnerability to flooding: health and social dimensionsPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 2002
- River flooding in Germany: Influenced by climate change?Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, 1995