Flood Emergency Planning: A Tool for Integrated Flood Management

1. INTRODUCTION

1. Integrated Flood Management (IFM) calls for a combination of effective strategies in flood management that employ structural and non-structural measures and a pro-active and post-recovery approach to dealing with flood risk. Because absolute protection from flooding is a myth, flood emergency management is an integral part of flood risk reduction, which aims at managing and minimizing the damaging effects of flooding.

2. Flood risks are defined as the expected losses from actual flood events over a specified period, and consist of the magnitude of the flood hazard, the exposure of human activity to flooding and the vulnerability of the elements at risk.1 Flood emergency measures can reduce the exposure to flooding; for example, moving individuals away from flooded areas to prevent individuals from drowning or the spread of diseases. Similarly, flood emergency planning can contribute, when integrated into an early warning system, to the shutting down of facilities that, if flooded, are likely to have an adverse effect on the safety of the population and the environment (for example, chemical plants).

3. It is not easy, however, to perform flood emergency planning and management properly.
   Early warning without appropriate action is not sufficient to ensure reduction of risk to flooding.
   Inadequate management may even worsen the situation: risks owing to exposure to flooding may sometimes be higher when evacuation is unorganized rather than when it is nonexistent.
   Institutions and stakeholders need to make necessary flood emergency planning and management arrangements so that individuals can respond effectively to flooding.

4. For the public, governments provide, to the extent possible, flood defences in an effort to reduce risk up to a certain predefined ‘design flood’2 . Even if all adequate technical measures are taken, society has to deal with residual risk of a flood that exceeds the design flood. Flood management practitioners and policymakers should consider uncertainties from climate variability and change as well as the distribution cost of related flood risk reduction measures across populations at risk. This issue can be addressed through emergency preparedness and response measures that ease the financial burden from flooding, and ensure operational continuity in response to flooding.

5. This document serves as a tool to provide basic information on preparedness and implementation activities for flood emergency planning. It is written primarily for flood managers, and in particular for individuals with an engineering background, as they are involved in formulating flood management strategies and policies, and need immediate access to information to engage with emergency planning and response mechanisms as part of their overall flood management strategy.