Probabilistic Approaches for Improved Flood Risk Assessment and Management under Consideration of Uncertainties

For decades, floods have been causing tremendous damage across Europe. Better flood forecasts and flood scenarios are needed to improve flood risk management and mitigate the future impact of floods. For years, Europe has been working on improving flood management. The introduction of the Floods Directive has obligated Member States to set up flood hazard and risk maps as well as management plans that will aid flood prevention, protection and preparedness and will serve as a basis for a uniform European approach.

One of the challenges faced by Member States in implementing the EU Floods Directive is how to factor in uncertainties of flood hazard and risk assessments in their flood risk management strategies. Water managers need tools to support decision-making on appropriate flood measures under consideration of uncertainties. Probabilistic methods quantify and visualize uncertainties by providing results as a set of potential values with their corresponding probability of occurrence.

adelphi has compiled this policy brief based on the outcomes of the research project IMPREX. The brief stresses how the implementation of the Floods Directive could benefit from the use of probabilistic approaches in calculations on flood occurrence and flood damage.

The policy brief highlights that probabilistic approaches have great potential to support flood risk and hazard assessments and can help EU member states develop efficient flood risk management plans within the framework of the Floods Directive and prepare for imminent floods in time. Finally, the brief derives policy recommendations to integrate probabilistic approaches into the implementation process of the EU Floods Directive.

Further policy recommendations from this project:

• Policy Brief: The importance of including compound events in the implementation of the Floods Directive
• Policy Brief: Towards successful implementation of preventive drought risk management in Europe
• Position Paper: Towards more action-oriented research and climate services – Lessons learned from IMPREX

Fact sheets:

• Innovative approaches for flood risk assessment
• Hydrometeorological predictions for the hydropower sector – potential economic benefits
• Improved forecasting and risk management for the water transport sector
• Urban water supply systems
• Drought preparedness, mitigation and management – innovative approaches for the agricultural sector
• Europe's global water risk

Comprehensive brochure:

• Improving Predictions and Management of Hydrological Extremes – Synthesized results for policy and decision makers