International Efforts Toward Robustness of Flood Management

Practical flood management depends on the extent to which the cost of taking risks is shared in a society among governments, interested parties, communities, and individuals. Risk management calls for identification, analysis, assessment, control, avoidance, minimization, or elimination of unacceptable risks through policies, procedures, and practices under three strategies for risk management: reduction, retention, and transfer. Flood risk management under a variety of uncertainties, such as the impacts of climate change, favors the implementation of flexible and adaptive management in top-down and bottom-up approaches. The former uses projections of global or spatially downscaled models to drive resource models and project impacts. The latter uses policy or planning tools to identify which changes in climate would most threaten their long-range plans or operations. Particularly for the bottom-up approaches, appropriate indicators that directly assess the flood risk of each area are essential. This study analyzes the international efforts of robust flood management from the top-down and bottom-up approaches, such as insurance and indicator and management systems, to seek incentive mechanisms for risk management. To implement international commitments, such as the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, there are gaps in implementing a holistic approach to flood management strategies and, therefore, mainstreaming disaster risk reduction and addressing sustainable development. The robustness of flood management requires the capacity-building necessary to understand and sufficiently respond to flood hazards, vulnerabilities, and benefits as an important evolutionary link in the transition between implementing global development goals, such as the Sustainable Development Goals, and disaster risk-reduction activities. There are three challenges: data and information infrastructure, inter-disciplinary knowledge development, and trans-disciplinary policy.