Tools for crises management of floods

Capacity planning emergency services

Robert Slomp, Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment Bas Kolen, HKV, Lijn in Water Jaap van der Schaaf, Oranjewoud

Contents
Flood management in the Netherlands, an introduction Problems Solutions: institutional, legal and organizational Multi layer safety policy Lessons from abroad: Emergency planning needs a review Techniques developed for the National Risk study Risk mapping and Evacuation plans The concept of Worst Credible Floods Capacity Planning Results Tools for a national flood exercise Policy analysis
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Flood management in the Netherlands: problems

Flood prone areas: from the sea, lakes or rivers Areas below design water levels

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Flood management in the Netherland: problems

Soil subsidence Sea level rise
20 cm/100 years

Climate change Rainfall/ Discharges Sea level rise Wind climate?

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Flood management in the Netherland: solutions

Legal Legal protection levels Funding for large scale works (parliament) Adaptation to climate change incorporated Institutional Clear roles Local taxation for maintenance Organizational - 6 yearly assessment - large knowledge base
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Multi layer risk strategy

Katrina, New Orleans 2005, wake up call For spatial planning and emergency services

Flood safety policy is a mix of: - Emergency services measures (& planning) - Spatial planning building of a flood resilient environment (housing & services ) - Flood protection: dunes, dikes, barriers

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Tools to determine flood risk

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Casualty rate for water depth percentage of population versus depth of water

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Evacuation routes, example for one dike ring national bias

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Local individual risk

Areas with the highest flood risk, expressed in probability per year
< 0.0000001 (green) 0.0000001 - 0.000001 0.000001 - 0.00001 > 0.00001 (red)

Red: > 10-5 recently reclaimed land (after 1950) Orange: 10-6 -10-5 reclaimed land along Rivers and estuaries (after 1200)

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Worst Credible Floods

Single flood events Determined by - Physical phenomenon storm field rainfall distribution - Return period 10x higher than legally determined protection levels

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Worst Credible floods National scenarios Single flood events: - River floods - coastal floods northern coast western coast - Combinations

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Western coast scenario flood depth after 24 hours

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Time table
4300 square km 120 Mld Euro 10.000 casualties

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Maximum water depth on account of flooding scenarios

legal protection levels versus worst credible floods

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Capacity planning
Analysis of the problem / Identifying the most urgent issues and areas: The areas were divided into sectors on account of the water depth Population per sector was divided into - self reliant - not self reliant Choice of primary goals (triage) : reducing casualties - from flooding (short term) - from living in waterlogged areas more than 3 days (long term) Identifying different strategies The most important tasks were determined per strategy - Personnel and transport for the short term - traffic control for evacuation - transporting non self reliant people Choice of preferred strategy per worst credible flood scenario by policy makers

Simple tools were made for this process

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Capacity planning: identifying high risk areas

Western Coast

Western & Northern Coast

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Time frame for decision making - 5 days ahead, 20 (?opzoeken) per cent probability - No transport possible 1 day ahead with beaufort 10/11 gale

Time in days (day 0 is when the storm hits the coast)

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Number of people to be evacuated, per strategy: - number of self reliant: millions - number of non self-reliant: hundreds of thousands

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Example of a tool: number of Ambulances

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Results
Tools for the 26 Safety regions map overlays excel sheets lots of practical ideas

The result of the policy analyses:

Flooding of the area of South of Holland is the largest catastrophe the Netherlands can expect, the probability is very small (the probability is lower than pandemic flu) Capacity of emergency services is insufficient even when we focus on saving the non self reliant people (hundreds of thousands).
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What should still be done:

Systematic use of the developed tools Find new strategies Evaluate new strategies by expanding the tools If necessary more detail: e.g. Differentiating evacuation percentages of people

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