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

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Risk-Informed Management of European River Basins

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

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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.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) is a geocode standard for referencing the subdivisions of countries for statistical purposes. NUTS regions are based on existing national administrative subdivisions. The population bandwidth for NUTS2 regions is 800,000–3 million, but this is not applied rigidly

  2. 2.

    See: http://prudence.dmi.dk/

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1087, 1081 HV, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Aline te Linde, Hans de Moel & Jeroen Aerts

  2. Twynstra Gudde, Stationsplein 1, 3818 LE, Amersfoort, The Netherlands

    Aline te Linde

Authors
  1. Aline te Linde
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  2. Hans de Moel
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  3. Jeroen Aerts
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Aline te Linde .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Deltares, Utrecht, Netherlands

    Jos Brils

  2. Department of Effect-Directed Analysis, UFZ Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig, Sachsen, Germany

    Werner Brack

  3. Umweltbundesamt GmbH, Wien, Austria

    Dietmar Müller-Grabherr

  4. Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Mini, Orléans cedex 2, France

    Philippe Négrel

  5. Inst. Environmental Studies, Free University Amsterdam Fac. Earth & Life Sciences, Amsterdam, Netherlands

    Jan E. Vermaat

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Linde, A.t., de Moel, H., Aerts, J. (2014). Informing River Basin Management on Flood and Drought Risks Taking Future Uncertainties into Account. In: Brils, J., Brack, W., Müller-Grabherr, D., Négrel, P., Vermaat, J. (eds) Risk-Informed Management of European River Basins. The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry, vol 29. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38598-8_6

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