Development of an Operational Framework for Flood Risk Management

Abstract

Abstract Uncertainty is inherent to the decision-making process of flood risk management, and hence uncertainty management has been identified as crucial in the decision-making process. Flood management has been transformed towards flood risk management highlighting the stakeholder integration and adaptation to extreme flood events. Therefore, the development of multifunctional land uses over floodplains considering the multiple objectives of the stakeholders have become a key to manage uncertainty incorporated with flood risk management. Integration of multiple stakeholders in the decision-making process has been a challenging task. Therefore, spatial planning as a collaborative planning tool has become very important to manage flood risk. Operationalization of flood risk management is mainly governed by the characteristics of the planning processes and it is also coined with the governance context of each locality. However, the importance of the role of spatial planning in flood risk management is still hidden. Further, there is no common framework developed for structuring the complexity of the planning process. Therefore, this research attempts to develop a framework for the operationalization of flood risk management. The conceptual framework was developed based on a comprehensive literature review. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) has been used and integrated with the Delphi technique to identify and calibrate the criteria and the sub-criteria of the framework. The developed framework has been validated with a case study. This research has been concluded that sixteen characteristics of the decision-making process contribute to the operationalization of flood risk management.