Sustainable Flood Retention Basins

The University of Edinburgh, Scotland

Sustainable Flood Retention Basins Addressing Recent Flood Risk Management Strategies

January 2009

Piotr Grabowiecki, MSc

SFRB Addressing Recent Flood Risk Management Strategies

A proposal for a Directive on the assessment and management of floods, adopted by EU comission

• Document accepted in January 2006 • Provide preliminary flood Risk Assessments for future flood occurence predictions • Provide flood maps in order to: →Increase societies’ awarness →Support provision, justification and development of sustainable policies →Provide spatial planning tools and emergancy plans • Provide flood risk management plans, designed at the level of river (sub)basin levels →Member of States to decide on detailed objectives and flood risk management →Provide appropriate measures

SFRB Addressing Recent Flood Risk Management Strategies

A proposal for a Directive on the assessment and management of floods, adopted by EU comission cont. • Proposals will vary between individual catchments • Proposals will vary within individual catchments with a specific emphasis on local conditions • The above, will recognise historical and cultural significance of the area, such as architectural objects or whole cities/towns

SFRB Addressing Recent Flood Risk Management Strategies

Links with Water Framework Directive 2000/60/EC • Usage of the same catchemnts as administrative units, already identified in WFD, article 3 • Work coordinations within river basins shall be continued (usually shared between Member States) • Implementation, reporting, databases shall be synchronised and create unified timescale • Public information and involvment should be used as major tools for projects implementation and avaliable to the above (maps, reports,models)

SFRB Addressing Recent Flood Risk Management Strategies

• Future Flood Directive should provide: → Preliminary Flood Risk Assessment → Flood Mapping → Flood Risk Management Plans • As the result of FD preparation Flood Handbook have been prepared, containing: → Examples of flood risk maps → Transbonduary flood hazard mapping → Insurance maps → Evacuation maps

SFRB Addressing Recent Flood Risk Management Strategies

Source: http://www.multimap.com/clients/places.cgi?client=sepa

SFRB Addressing Recent Flood Risk Management Strategies

Example Case Studies as a result of proposed Flood Directive

• Sustainable Flood Management Programme in Hungary for Tisza River • Sustainable Flood Management Action Programme in Austria for Danube River • Sustainable Flod Risk Management in Germany and The Netherlands for Rivers Rhine and Meuse

SFRB Addressing Recent Flood Risk Management Strategies

Aims of Sustainable Development and Flood Risk Management • Improve river enineering and navigation on European rivers • Improve natural environment development (multifuncional land use) • To provide social involvment, their actions and communication Structure of SD approach: Planning → Implementation → Maintenance with constant sustainable solutions and learning

SFRB Addressing Recent Flood Risk Management Strategies

Sustainable Development in the aspect of Action Plans of Flood Defence provides: • Space for local habitats and their natural development • Creation of trans-national environment corridors • Reduce flood Risk • Borderless linkage between habitats along the river • International co-operation on environmental prevention • Environmental Impact Assessment cration for river communities • Exchange in staff involved during project co-operation

SFRB Addressing Recent Flood Risk Management Strategies

What’s needed to give a river ‘more room’: • Provide tools for more small floods to occur in the upstream basin in order to reduce large downstream flooding • Identify certain ‘spots’ for flood measure installations • Categorise engineering and natural, existing and possible Flood Retention Basins • Provide flood prevention tools in order to hold more intensive precipitation in the upstream i.e. reverse urban development in order to increase infiltration – flood peak attenuation • Decrease land overflow introduced into the river headwaters • Provide room for water alongside the river stream – lateral space usage,

SFRB Addressing Recent Flood Risk Management Strategies

Ways of lowering the flood peaks using ‘room-for-river’ approach • Dyke relocation • Flood bypass • Floodplain lowering • Providing retention areas beyond the river banks Overall effect: • Widening the river basin • Provided space for flood peak lowering is used for river ‘selfcleaning’ • Habitats quality improvement • Provision of more green spaces used for recreational, educational or sport activities

SFRB Addressing Recent Flood Risk Management Strategies

The role of Sustainable Flood Retention Basin classificaton: • Identify the areas of possible flood peaks retention in order to increase local and national awarness • Providing decision support tools for planners, landscape managers, engineers and local comunities in SFRB identification • To provide tools for comparisons between different locations and • Improves landscape classification systems in order to describe landscape functions in more detailed manner • Improvement of local easthetics and provision green spaces for local communities

SFRB Addressing Recent Flood Risk Management Strategies

So what is a Sustainable Flood Retention Basin? SFRB is: ‘an aesthetically pleasing retention basin predominantly used for flood protection adhering to sustainable drainage and best management practices’ (Scholz and Sadowski, 2009) In the definition sustainable means the usage of SUDS (Sustainable Urban Draiange Systems). Major differeces of SFRB from SUDS: • May not store water • Are aesthetically correlated to the sourrounding landscape FRB + SUDS techniques = SFRB

SFRB Addressing Recent Flood Risk Management Strategies

Types of SFRB 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

HFRB (Hydraulic Flood Retention Basin) TFRB (Traditional Flood Retention Basin) SFRW (Sustainable Flood Retention Wetland) AFTW (Aesthetic Flood Treatment Wetland) IFRW (Integrated Flood Retention Wetland) NFRW (Natural Flood Retention Wetland) Are the result of different type characteristics and weightings used for the classification.

Most significant clasification variables: Mean annual rainfall, seasonal influence, dam height, natural catchment proporton, forest and animal passage floodplain elevation, wetness, basin and channel connectivity, etc.

SFRB Addressing Recent Flood Risk Management Strategies

Recommendations for future work •

Model improvement, such as different calssifications in order to confront existing model in order to find similarities and weaknesses of current classification

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Incerase of the current database holdings in order to exclude model errors and database management

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SFRB identification by spatial analysis (GIS, mapping satellite images interpretation)

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Field checks for the corectness of increasing database

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Feedback requirement from professional bodies such as councils, planning institutions, engineering organisations for classification improvement

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Cost assessment and legislation action in order to implement classification model in national and european law

SFRB Addressing Recent Flood Risk Management Strategies

Sustainability = working for better future

Source: www.inbo-news.org/ag2007/comms/7_10_45/Toth-Sandor.pdf

SFRB Addressing Recent Flood Risk Management Strategies

References •

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Hooijer, A., Li, Y., Kerssens, P., Van Der Vat, M. & Zhang, J., Year. Risk assessment as a basis for sustainable flood management. In: G. Li, (ed.). 29th Annual Congress of the International-Association-of-Hydraulic-Engineering-and-Research (IAHR), Beijing, Peoples R China: Tsinghua University Press, 442-449. Hooijer, A., Klijn, F., Pedroli, G.B.M. & Van Os, A.G., 2004. Towards sustainable flood risk management in the Rhine and Meuse river basins: Synopsis of the findings of IRMA-SPONGE. River Research and Applications, 20, 343-357. Liska, I., 2005. Concerted efforts towards Sustainable Flood Protection in th Danube River Basin. Geophysical Research Abstracts. European Geosciences Union. 7, 10820/2005. Nijland, H.J., Year. Sustainable development of floodplains (SDF) projected.^eds. Workshop on Research and Technology Integration in Support of the European Union Water Framework Directive, Ghent, BELGIUM: Elsevier Sci Ltd, 245-252. Scholz, M., 2007. Expert system outline for the classification of sustainable flood retention basins (SFRBs). Civil Engineering and Environmental Systems, 24, 193-209. Scholz, M., 2008. Classification of flood retention basins: The Kaiserstuhl case study. Environmental & Engineering Geoscience, 14, 61-80. Scholz, M. & Sadowski, A.J., 2009. Conceptual classification model for Sustainable Flood Retention Basins. Journal of Environmental Management, 90, 624-633. Toth S., 2004. Sustanable Flood Management action programme of the Danube River Basin with regard to flood forecasting and flood prevention. 2nd EFAS Workshop, EC JRC, Ispra, Italy, November 10-12, 2004. PPS presentaton.