Decision Support System
The FRAMES Decision Support System, or DSS, can be used as a road map with the following 10 questions to help involved authorities identify how governance relates to the resilience of flood prone areas.
1 What is the flood risk (sea, river, rainfall) and which are the flood risk challenges in your region?
Typical challenges for areas:
- Coastal flooding as main challenge (Zeeland, Denmark)
- Fluvial flooding and coastal flooding/influence (Alblasserwaard, Wesermarsch)
- Fluvial flooding (UK pilots, Belgium pilots)
- Pluvial flooding: surface water flooding
When this is not clear, please make use of the following tools
- Flood risk maps delivered for the EU Flood Directive
- Pilots: Scenario’s and other forecasting techniques to define future challenges
- Pilots: IPCC reports and national adaptation strategies
Discuss flood risk scenarios and define challenges for resilient areas and communities with relevant stakeholders
2 What is the emphasis of the current FRMS applied in your area?
- Apply multilevel and multi-actor to discuss regional flood risk management strategies
- Multilevel: EU, national, regional, local
- Multi-actor: government, private companies, NGOs, citizens.
3 How is flood risk management organized in my country?
Table 1: Comparison of flood risk governance arrangements (FRGAs), adapted from Matzcak et al., 2016:72, completed for Germany and Denmark by using Buijs et al., 2018.
| Characteristics of governance | Belgium | Germany | Denmark | the Netherlands | United Kingdom |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Diversification & dominance | Moderately diversified, defence still important | High diversified, focus on defence | Highly diversified, focus on defence | Low diversification, defence dominant | Highly diversified, quite balanced |
| Multi-sector | Water sector and spatial planning gaining equal importance; water sector still important | Multi-sector involvement & integrated by spatial planning | Multi-sector involvement (landowners and farmers have a say; landowners do not pay) | Water sector dominant | Multi-sector involvement & integrated by spatial planning |
| Multi-actor | Public (state dominant) | Public (state and federal states) dominant | Public & private | Public (state dominant) | Public & private |
| Multi-level | Decentralised, tendency towards centralisation | Central guidance & decentralization to federal state & local level | Central guidance & ongoing decentralization to local level | Both central and regional level | Central and local level |
4 What is the desired situation in relation to the flood risk challenges for the region?
5 What are potential MLS-actions to enhance the flood resilience of your region?
Overview of actions based on analysis pilot activities
- Linked to MLS layers
- Linked to area context to apply actions: coastal, fluvial, pluvial
- Linked to Diversification of Governance context to apply actions (or adaptation of FGRA required): low, medium, high
- Pilots can be used as examples
6 What is the impact of potential (spatial) actions on systems and sectors in the region?
Make sure to harmonize impact assessments with the national adaptation strategies
7 Who should be involved and what level should participation be?
- Stakeholder analysis examples by project
- Link to FRGA to support stakeholder analysis
- Analysis of multilevel and multi-actor setting, including participation level, during pilot implementation
- Analyse differences between pilot implementation and FRGA
8 How can the implementation process for MLS-pilots be organized?
There are three types of pilot implementation processes:
- Goal oriented (Reimerswaal, …)
- Participatory process oriented (UK)
- Planning process oriented (DAPP Denmark)
Differences are mainly based on the governance context, the organization in the lead in the pilot and the role in the FRGA.
9 What are potential barriers and success factors in the implementation of MLS actions and how can these be dealt with considering up-scaling of pilot results?
10 Which capacities are key to foster adaptation towards a more diversified flood risk management strategy?
- Analysis of adaptive capacities lacking, employed or emerging in pilots studies, based on pilot processes
- Provides on a more abstract level to decision-makers which capacities are needed for planning, implementation and up-scaling of MLS
- Roadmap for capacity building for pilots to become successful working on diversified FRM
Make sure to interview decision-makers about adaptive capacities