Towards modelling flood protection investment as a coupled human and natural system

Abstract. Due to a number of recent high-profile flood events and the apparent threat from global warming, governments and their agencies are under pressure to make proactive investments to protect people living in floodplains. However, adopting a proactive approach as a universal strategy is not affordable. It has been argued that delaying expensive and essentially irreversible capital decisions could be a prudent strategy in situations with high future uncertainty. This paper firstly uses Monte Carlo simulation to explore the performance of proactive and reactive investment strategies using a rational cost–benefit approach in a natural system with varying levels of persistence/interannual variability in annual maximum floods. It is found that, as persistence increases, there is a change in investment strategy optimality from proactive to reactive. This could have implications for investment strategies under the increasingly variable climate that is expected with global warming. As part of the emerging holistic approaches to flood risk management, there is increasing emphasis on stakeholder participation in determining where and when flood protection investments are made, and so flood risk management is becoming more people-centred. As a consequence, multiple actors are involved in the decision-making process, and the social sciences are assuming an increasingly important role in flood risk management. There is a need for modelling approaches which can couple the natural and human system elements. It is proposed that coupled human and natural system (CHANS) modelling could play an important role in understanding the motivations, actions and influence of citizens and institutions and how these impact on the effective delivery of flood protection investment. A framework for using agent-based modelling of human activities leading to flood investments is outlined, and some of the challenges associated with implementation are discussed.

[1]  J. Barredo.  Normalised flood losses in Europe: 1970-2006 , 2009 .

[2]  E. Evans,et al.  Foresight : future flooding : scientific summary : volume II : managing future risks , 2004 .

[3]  Gabriele Villarini,et al.  On the temporal clustering of US floods and its relationship to climate teleconnection patterns , 2013 .

[4]  Martin Raubal,et al.  Ontology and epistemology for agent-based wayfinding simulation , 2001, Int. J. Geogr. Inf. Sci..

[5]  Mark Wilkinson,et al.  Runoff management during the September 2008 floods in the Belford catchment, Northumberland , 2010 .

[6]  R. Howarth,et al.  Limitations of integrated assessment models of climate change , 2009 .

[7]  Guillaume Deffuant,et al.  How can extremism prevail? A study based on the relative agreement interaction model , 2002, J. Artif. Soc. Soc. Simul..

[8]  Steven C Bankes,et al.  Tools and techniques for developing policies for complex and uncertain systems , 2002, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[9]  Cecilia Svensson,et al.  Dependence between extreme sea surge, river flow and precipitation in eastern Britain , 2002 .

[10]  Elinor Ostrom,et al.  Complexity of Coupled Human and Natural Systems , 2007, Science.

[11]  G. Di Baldassarre,et al.  Towards understanding the dynamic behaviour of floodplains as human-water systems , 2013 .

[12]  Anna Scolobig,et al.  The missing link between flood risk awareness and preparedness: findings from case studies in an Alpine Region , 2012, Natural Hazards.

[13]  L. An,et al.  Modeling human decisions in coupled human and natural systems : Review of agent-based models , 2012 .

[14]  David B. Stephenson,et al.  Serial clustering of intense European storms , 2009 .

[15]  Sally J. Priest,et al.  Flood Risk Management in England: A Changing Landscape of Risk Responsibility? , 2008 .

[16]  Paolo Pellizzari.  Complexities and simplicity: a review of agent-based artificial markets , 2005 .

[17]  Monica Wachowicz,et al.  A design and application of a multi-agent system for simulation of multi-actor spatial planning. , 2004, Journal of environmental management.

[18]  I. Rodríguez‐Iturbe,et al.  Random Functions and Hydrology , 1984 .

[19]  農林水産奨励会農林水産政策情報センター,et al.  The green book : appraisal and evaluation in central government , 2003 .

[20]  R. Stouffer,et al.  Stationarity Is Dead: Whither Water Management? , 2008, Science.

[21]  Sarah Lavery,et al.  Flood risk management in the Thames Estuary looking ahead 100 years , 2005, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences.

[22]  O. Jones,et al.  Flood histories, flood memories and informal flood knowledge in the development of community resilience to future flood risk , 2012 .

[23]  Catharina Landström,et al.  Flood apprentices: an exercise in making things public , 2011 .

[24]  Lynne Hamill,et al.  Social Circles: A Simple Structure for Agent-Based Social Network Models , 2009, J. Artif. Soc. Soc. Simul..

[25]  Kristian Krieger,et al.  The Limits and Variety of Risk-based Governance: the case of flood management in Germany and England , 2013 .

[26]  Klaus Fraedrich,et al.  Continuum climate variability: long-term memory, scaling, and 1/F-noise , 2009 .

[27]  Renée A. Irvin,et al.  Citizen Participation in Decision Making: Is It Worth the effort? , 2004 .

[28]  A. Montanari,et al.  Emerging Approaches to Hydrological Risk Management in a Changing World , 2013 .

[29]  Robert Lempert,et al.  Agent-based modeling as organizational and public policy simulators , 2002, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[30]  E. Penning‐Rowsell,et al.  ‘Signals’ from pre-crisis discourse: Lessons from UK flooding for global environmental policy change? , 2006 .

[31]  G. Blöschl,et al.  Socio‐hydrology: A new science of people and water , 2012 .

[32]  Lars Otto Naess,et al.  Institutional adaptation to climate change: Flood responses at the municipal level in Norway , 2005 .

[33]  A. Pitman,et al.  An Assessment of GCM Skill in Simulating Persistence across Multiple Time Scales , 2011 .

[34]  A C Cashman,et al.  Alternative manifestations of actor responses to urban flooding: case studies from Bradford and Glasgow. , 2009, Water science and technology : a journal of the International Association on Water Pollution Research.

[35]  A. Brath,et al.  Analysis of the effects of levee heightening on flood propagation: example of the River Po, Italy , 2009 .

[36]  A. Craswell,et al.  Integrated assessment of water resources and global change : a north-south analysis , 2007 .

[37]  P. DeMarzo,et al.  Persuasion Bias, Social Influence, and Uni-Dimensional Opinions , 2001 .

[38]  Stewart W. Franks,et al.  Long‐term behaviour of ENSO: Interactions with the PDO over the past 400 years inferred from paleoclimate records , 2006 .

[39]  Armando Brath,et al.  Assessing the effect on flood frequency of land use change via hydrological simulation (with uncertainty) , 2006 .

[40]  D. Parker,et al.  The Implications of Skewed Risk Perception for a Dutch Coastal Land Market: Insights from an Agent-Based Computational Economics Model , 2011, Agricultural and Resource Economics Review.

[41]  Oscar J. Mesa,et al.  Dynamical System Exploration of the Hurst Phenomenon in Simple Climate Models , 2013 .

[42]  G. O'Donnell,et al.  Strategic Overview of Land Use Management in the Context of Catchment Flood Risk Management Planning , 2010 .

[43]  K. Krieger.  Norms , structures , procedures and variety in risk-based governance : the case of flood management in Germany and England , 2012 .

[44]  Dennis J. Parker,et al.  Floodplain development policy in England and Wales , 1995 .

[45]  Casey Brown,et al.  An alternate approach to assessing climate risks , 2012 .

[46]  D. Pearce,et al.  Cost?Benefit Analysis and Environmental Policy , 1998 .

[47]  Braden R. Allenby,et al.  Earth systems engineering and management , 2000, IEEE Technol. Soc. Mag..

[48]  David Saurí,et al.  Social perceptions of floods and flood management in a Mediterranean area (Costa Brava, Spain) , 2010 .

[49]  T. Grothmann,et al.  People at Risk of Flooding: Why Some Residents Take Precautionary Action While Others Do Not , 2006 .

[50]  Demetris Koutsoyiannis,et al.  Hurst‐Kolmogorov Dynamics and Uncertainty 1 , 2011 .

[51]  Teun Terpstra,et al.  Perception and Communication of Flood Risks: A Systematic Review of Empirical Research , 2013, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[52]  Peter P.J. Driessen,et al.  Beyond the art of diking: interactive policy on river management in The Netherlands , 2001 .

[53]  P. Willems,et al.  Trends and multidecadal oscillations in rainfall extremes, based on a more than 100‐year time series of 10 min rainfall intensities at Uccle, Belgium , 2008 .

[54]  G. Syme,et al.  Fairness Principles In Allocating Water: Integrating Views Of Different Agents , 2004 .

[55]  Günter Blöschl,et al.  Socio-hydrology: conceptualising human-flood interactions , 2013 .

[56]  S. Lane,et al.  The relationship between Lamb weather types and long‐term changes in flood frequency, River Eden, UK , 2012 .

[57]  N. Matalas.  Stochastic Hydrology in the Context of Climate Change , 1997 .

[58]  Steven A. Mauget,et al.  Multidecadal Regime Shifts in U.S. Streamflow, Precipitation, and Temperature at the End of the Twentieth Century , 2003 .

[59]  Michael Monticino,et al.  Coupled human and natural systems: A multi-agent-based approach , 2007, Environ. Model. Softw..

[60]  Girish J. Gulati,et al.  VODYS: An Agent-Based Model for Exploring Campaign Dynamics , 2011 .

[61]  David Batten,et al.  Simulating Human Behaviour: the Invisible Choreography of Self–Referential Systems , 2004 .

[62]  E. Evans,et al.  Foresight : future flooding : scientific summary : volume I : future risks and their drivers , 2004 .

[63]  Elinor Ostrom,et al.  Coupled Human and Natural Systems , 2007, Ambio.

[64]  S. Mauget.  Intra- to Multidecadal Climate Variability over the Continental United States: 1932–99 , 2003 .

[65]  Ortwin Renn,et al.  The Risk Perception Paradox—Implications for Governance and Communication of Natural Hazards , 2013, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[66]  J. Gareth Polhill,et al.  Agent-based land-use models: a review of applications , 2007, Landscape Ecology.

[67]  I. Helsloot,et al.  Safety chain approach in flood risk management , 2008 .

[68]  Bruno Merz,et al.  Review article "Assessment of economic flood damage" , 2010 .

[69]  P. DeMarzo,et al.  Persuasion Bias, Social Influence, and Uni-Dimensional Opinions , 2001 .

[70]  Mathew P. White,et al.  Risk interpretation and action: A conceptual framework for responses to natural hazards , 2012 .

[71]  Lindsey McEwen,et al.  Sustainable Flood Memories, InformalKnowledge And The Development Of CommunityResilience To Future Flood Risk , 2012 .

[72]  James J. Porter,et al.  Flood-Risk Management, Mapping, and Planning: The Institutional Politics of Decision Support in England , 2012 .

[73]  M. B. Abbott,et al.  Flood Risk and Social Justice: From Quantitative to Qualitative Flood Risk Assessment and Mitigation , 2012 .

[74]  T. Stocker,et al.  Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation. A Special Report of Working Groups I and II of IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , 2012 .

[75]  Paul D. Bates,et al.  Sampling-based flood risk analysis for fluvial dike systems , 2005 .

[76]  Cynthia F. Kurtz,et al.  The new dynamics of strategy: sense-making in a complex and complicated world , 2003, IEEE Engineering Management Review.

[77]  Simulation of Resilience of an Insurance System to Flood Risk , 2012 .

[78]  Performance of flood embankments in England and Wales , 2004 .

[79]  Magnus Boman,et al.  A Computational Agent Model of Flood Management Strategies , 2011 .

[80]  Jim W. Hall,et al.  Quantified scenarios analysis of drivers and impacts of changing flood risk in England and Wales: 2030–2100 , 2003 .

[81]  E. Penning‐Rowsell,et al.  Victim pressure, institutional inertia and climate change adaptation: The case of flood risk , 2011 .

[82]  O. Jones,et al.  Building local/lay flood knowledges into community flood resilience planning after the July 2007 floods, Gloucestershire, UK , 2012 .

[83]  Michael Batty,et al.  SERIES Key Challenges in Agent-Based Modelling for GeoSpatial Simulation , 2007 .

[85]  Kate Burningham,et al.  'It'll never happen to me': understanding public awareness of local flood risk. , 2008, Disasters.

[86]  Christophe Le Page,et al.  Agent based simulation of a small catchment water management in northern Thailand: Description of the CATCHSCAPE model , 2003 .

[87]  A. Robson,et al.  A study of national trend and variation in UK floods , 1998 .

[88]  David Lister,et al.  Extended riverflow reconstructions for England and Wales, 1865–2002 , 2006 .

[89]  G. O'Donnell,et al.  Is there a link between agricultural land-use management and flooding? , 2007 .

[90]  J. O'neill,et al.  Social Justice and the Future of Flood Insurance , 2012 .

[91]  Demetris Koutsoyiannis.  “Hurst-Kolomogorov Dynamics and Uncertainty” , 2010 .

[92]  E. Irwin,et al.  New Directions for Urban Economic Models of Land Use Change: Incorporating Spatial Dynamics and Heterogeneity , 2010 .

[93]  E. Penning‐Rowsell,et al.  Natural and imposed injustices: the challenges in implementing 'fair' flood risk management policy in England , 2007 .

[94]  J. R. Wallis,et al.  Regional Frequency Analysis: An Approach Based on L-Moments , 1997 .

[95]  Claudia Pahl-Wostl,et al.  Understanding Climate Policy Using Participatory Agent-Based Social Simulation , 2000, MABS.