Enhanced flood preparedness in municipalities

Researchers at the Wei­hen­stephan-Tries­dorf Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences (HSWT) and the Mainz Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences (HS Mainz), togeth­er with prac­ti­cal and munic­i­pal part­ners, have devel­oped a con­sult­ing tool in the joint project “Incen­tive Sys­tems for Munic­i­pal Flood Pre­ven­tion (AKUT)” that sup­ports munic­i­pal employ­ees and plan­ners in pre­vent­ing flood dam­age in munic­i­pal­i­ties. The focus is on bring­ing all actors togeth­er, over­com­ing con­flict­ing goals and joint­ly gen­er­at­ing effi­cient over­all solu­tions. To achieve this, the method relies on a site-spe­cif­ic opti­miza­tion and incen­tive system.

As a result of cli­mate change, heavy rain events, such as those that occurred this sum­mer, are increas­ing in fre­quen­cy and inten­si­ty. In prin­ci­ple, they can affect all regions of Ger­many. There­fore, flood safe­ty is one of the cen­tral chal­lenges for urban drainage. This com­plex task requires inter­dis­ci­pli­nary coop­er­a­tion between var­i­ous munic­i­pal and pri­vate actors, such as cit­i­zens, farm­ers, local busi­ness­es and forestry. For an effec­tive pre­cau­tion­ary con­cept, it is nec­es­sary to imple­ment mea­sures that serve both the indi­vid­ual and the gen­er­al pub­lic. For exam­ple, it is often the case that flood pro­tec­tion mea­sures must be imple­ment­ed on prop­er­ties owned by pri­vate indi­vid­u­als or businesses.

An essen­tial pre­req­ui­site for fruit­ful coop­er­a­tion is an under­stand­ing of flood pre­ven­tion as a joint munic­i­pal task that can only be mas­tered togeth­er. At present, how­ev­er, the indi­vid­ual actors lack the will­ing­ness to sub­or­di­nate them­selves to an opti­mized over­all solu­tion process. There is often a lack of incen­tives to do so.

So that everyone pulls together: Location-specific, optimized strategies

The con­sult­ing tool ‘AKUT’ address­es this prob­lem. It sup­ports munic­i­pal­i­ties in iden­ti­fy­ing suit­able pre­cau­tions and thus makes it eas­i­er for local politi­cians to decide on mea­sures to be imple­ment­ed. AKUT explic­it­ly takes into account the nec­es­sary inter­ac­tion between the var­i­ous actors and the incen­tives that moti­vate them to imple­ment the steps. After a short train­ing peri­od, the tool can be used even with­out IT expertise.

Users first draw flood pro­tec­tion mea­sures for reten­tion, e.g. basins, swales, areas, or drainage, e.g. chan­nels, ditch­es or embank­ments, at pos­si­ble loca­tions on an inter­ac­tive map. AKUT then uses a math­e­mat­i­cal mod­el to deter­mine an opti­mal selec­tion from these pos­si­ble mea­sures. In doing so, it depicts var­i­ous inter­re­la­tion­ships, such as the stake­hold­er-relat­ed haz­ard sit­u­a­tion and the expect­ed extent of dam­age, the effec­tive­ness and fea­si­bil­i­ty of the pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures, and the required indi­vid­ual incentives.

In this way, the tool deter­mines an opti­mal strat­e­gy for action, tak­ing into account the site-spe­cif­ic con­di­tions of the munic­i­pal­i­ty and the will­ing­ness of the var­i­ous actors to par­tic­i­pate. This includes a com­bi­na­tion of struc­tur­al mea­sures includ­ing the asso­ci­at­ed costs and nec­es­sary incen­tives. Map rep­re­sen­ta­tions before and after the opti­miza­tion illus­trate the expect­ed effect on the haz­ard situation.

The project, which was fund­ed by the Ger­man Fed­er­al Min­istry for the Envi­ron­ment, Nature Con­ser­va­tion and Nuclear Safe­ty (BMU), was led by Prof. Dr. Inka Kauf­mann Alves from HS Mainz, and on the HSWT side by Prof. Dr. Clemens Thie­len. Besides the two uni­ver­si­ties, igr GmbH and the munic­i­pal­i­ty of Enken­bach-Alsen­born were involved in the project. It was also sup­port­ed by the Ver­bands­ge­meinde Nordpfälz­er Land, the Kom­mu­nal­wirtschaft Mit­tlere Bergstraße in Hesse, the munic­i­pal­i­ty of Elxleben in Thuringia and the Min­istry for Cli­mate Pro­tec­tion, Envi­ron­ment, Ener­gy and Mobil­i­ty Rhineland-Palatinate.