Flood Risk and Social Justice: From Quantitative to Qualitative Flood Risk Assessment and Mitigation (Urban Hydroinformatics) - Hardcover

Vojinovic, Zoran; Abbott, Michael B.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1843393875 ISBN 13: 9781843393870

Verlag: IWA Publishing, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

Flood Risk and Social Justice is a response to the rising significance of floods and flood-related disasters worldwide, as an initiative to promote a socially just approach to the problems of flood risk. It integrates the human-social and the technological components to provide a holistic view.

This book treats flooding as a multi-dimensional human and natural world tragedy that must be accommodated using all the social and technological means that can be mobilised before, during and after the flooding event. It covers socially just flood risk mitigation practices which necessitate a wide range of multidisciplinary approaches, starting from social and wider environmental needs, including feedback cycles between human needs and technological means. Flood Risk and Social Justice looks at how to judge whether a risk is acceptable or not by addressing an understanding of social and phenomenological considerations rather than simple calculations of probabilities multiplied by unwanted outcomes and their balancing between costs and benefits.

It is argued that the present ‘flood management’ practice should be largely replaced by the social justice approach where particular attention is given to deciding what is the right thing to do within a much wider context. Thus it insists upon the validity of modes of human understanding which cannot be addressed within the limited context of modern science. Flood Risk and Social Justice is written to support a wide range of audiences and seeks to improve the dialogue between researchers and practitioners from different disciplines (including post-graduate engineering, environmental and social science students, industry practitioners, academics, planners, environmental advocacy groups and environmental law professionals) who have a strong interest in a new kind of social justice work that can act as a continuous counter-balance to the various mechanisms that unceasingly give rise to profound injustices.

More information about this book can be found in this article written for the WaterWiki by the author: http://www.iwawaterwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Articles/FloodRiskandSocialJustice

Authors: Zoran Vojinovic is Associate Professor at the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, Delft, the Netherlands, with almost 20 years of consulting and research experience in various aspects of water industry in New Zealand, Australia, Asia, Europe, Central/South America and the Caribbean. Michael B. Abbott is Emeritus Professor at the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, Delft, the Netherlands, and a Director of the European Institute for Industrial Leadership in Brussels. He founded and developed the disciplines of Computational Hydraulics and Hydroinformatics and co-founded, the Journal of Hydroinformatics with Professor Roger Falconer.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Zoran Vojinovic is Associate Professor at the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, Delft, the Netherlands, with almost 20 years of consulting and research experience in various aspects of water industry in New Zealand, Australia, Asia, Europe, Central/South America and the Caribbean. Michael B. Abbott is Emeritus Professor at the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, Delft, the Netherlands, and a Director of the European Institute for Industrial Leadership in Brussels. He founded and developed the disciplines of Computational Hydraulics and Hydroinformatics and co-founded, the Journal of Hydroinformatics with Professor Roger Falconer.

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Flood Risk and Social Justice

From Quantitative to Qualitative Flood Risk Assessment and Mitigation

By Zoran Vojinovic

IWA Publishing

Copyright © 2012 IWA Publishing
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-84339-387-0

Contents

Foreword by J. Philip O'Kane, xvii, 
Foreword by Jean A. Cunge, xxi, 
Preface, xv, 
Acknowledgements, xxix, 
Introduction, xxxi, 
Part I: The Nature of Urban Flood Risk, 1, 
Chapter 1 Urban areas and flooding, 3, 
Chapter 2 Tracing the roots of urban flood risk, 13, 
Chapter 3 The nature of risk, 41, 
Part II: Adding Social and Ethical Aspects into Flood Risk Mitigation, 53, 
Chapter 4 The technocratic way of thinking, 55, 
Chapter 5 Historical perspectives of social justice, 79, 
Chapter 6 Characterisations of social justice, 101, 
Chapter 7 Realising social justice in the context of flood risk mitigation, 115, 
Chapter 8 Leadership and social justice, 143, 
Chapter 9 On sociotechnology, 163, 
Chapter 10 Data - Information - Knowledge - Understanding - Wisdom, 171, 
Chapter 11 The role of hydroinformatics in active stakeholder participation, 181, 
Part III: Scientific and Technical Aspects of Flooding, 199, 
Chapter 12 Floods and drainage systems, 201, 
Chapter 13 Quantifying urban processes, 217, 
Chapter 14 Data collection for modelling, 235, 
Chapter 15 Rainfall data analysis and catchment delineation, 267, 
Chapter 16 Modelling wet weather and dry weather flows, 281, 
Chapter 17 Hydraulic modelling, 299, 
Chapter 18 Numerical solutions of equations, 329, 
Chapter 19 Modelling practice, 349, 
Part IV: Practical Aspects of Flood Risk Assessment and Mitigation, 399, 
Chapter 20 Flood risk assessment, 401, 
Chapter 21 Flood mitigation measures, 459, 
Chapter 22 Production of plans, 481, 
Chapter 23 Case studies, 503, 
Afterword, 529, 
References, 533, 

CHAPTER 1

Urban areas and flooding

OVERVIEW OF PART I

The predominance of almost exclusively technocratic and piecemeal approaches has led to the development of less effective and less efficient means of responding to floods and flood-related disasters. In current practice there is a clear evidence of a lack of interaction between social aspects and engineering and this appears to be a major hindrance for solving some of the greatest problems associated with floods and flood-related disasters. There are many such examples of dealing with various flood-related projects whereby large amounts of human and financial resources have been thrown into technical developments without regard to their related social interactions. It is now obvious that flood risk mitigation processes require multiple approaches and disciplines and the aim of this part of the book is to bring into a synergic relation a range of aspects concerning both social and technical issues that can provide states of social justice.

In the following sections we illustrate the nature of flooding in the case of a 2007 Jakarta flood event and we bring other related aspects from different places in the world. We introduce a new holistic view of looking at root causes of urban flood risk. We touch upon the evolution of flood mitigation practice and current state of risk assessment work. We also introduce social justice as an important dimension within the flood risk mitigation process. At the same time, we observe that further examples can be seen on our television programmes on an almost everyday basis, even if there is rarely any explanation of the causes and effects in these presentations.

1.2 URBAN AREAS AND FLOODING - WHAT CAN WE CONCLUDE SO FAR?

Urban areas are usually defined as geographic locations where secondary (industrial, manufacturing) or tertiary (service) sectors dominate over the primary (agriculture, forestry, mining, etc.) sectors, which display high population density or size, constitute an administrative region and where all land uses and activities lying within such a metropolitan district are referred to as "urban". In urban areas, society is popularly perceived as being in control of a physical environment where natural hazards such as floods can be managed to a larger extent by the means of technical (or engineering) measures.

Floods are commonly defined as an overwhelming flow of water onto land that is normally dry and which under certain circumstances can cause unprecedented losses and devastation. These can result from a wide range of events and processes. These factors can be diverse (natural, human or technology related) as well as site-specific. Amongst others they can include heavy rain, storm surges, tsunamis, overtopping river banks and raised groundwater levels. A review of natural catastrophes between 1950 and 2000 and economical losses can be sourced from Munich Re (2002).

The threats from floods and other natural disasters were initially described as "those elements of the physical environment harmful to man and caused by forces extraneous to him" (Barton and Kates 1964). Such a perception has led to the preference for physical rather than social treatment of floods with urban societies being allowed to live under the shadow of increasing risk. Certainly, there is much to be gained from physical engineering-based interventions, but without an appropriate inclusion of social and ethical aspects into the analysis our interventions into the physical environment are in danger of ignoring differences in the influence of individual and social characteristics on the susceptibility or response to urban flood risk. It is the objective of this part of the book to explore not only the technical and natural but also the closely interacting social dimensions of at-risk elements and examine the ways in which such interactions shape the vulnerability to floods that take place in urban areas in developed as well as developing countries. Perhaps, the following example of Jakarta 2007 flood illustrates best the fundamental characteristics of urban flood risk and highlights the greater susceptibility to losses of those living in the cities.

On 2nd February 2007 there was a major flood event in the city of Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, which affected not only the central area but also several other areas around the city, such as West Java and Banten. This flood is considered as one of the worst floods that took place in Jakarta in the last three centuries, including the 1996 and 2002 flood events. On that day in 2007, over 70,000 homes were flooded, resulting in the displacement of some 200,000 people: see Figure 1.1. This event has caused almost US$1 billion in tangible damages. Approximately 190,000 people have fallen ill due to flood-related illnesses and the officially reported death toll was close to 70. This was one of the greatest flood disasters that had ever occurred in Jakarta. What stands out is that the residents of an officially illegal neighbourhood - a squatter (or slum) area on the flood plain - suffered an unprecedented impact. This flood event illustrates some of the fundamental characteristics of urban flood risk and vulnerability which forms an important theme for discussion in this chapter. It certainly reminds us that urban areas are not immune to the forces of nature, but more importantly, it indicates that some community groups are more exposed to threats from flood disasters (i.e., they are more vulnerable) than others as they continue living and working on floodplains as well as other hazardous areas.

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Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: IWA Publishing
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1843393875
• ISBN 13: 9781843393870
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 563
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar