Flood risk managment strategies across boundaries : a research approach

Floods are the most frequent and damaging of all types of natural disasters and annually affect the lives of millions all over the globe. Against this background, enhanced climate variability and climate change are expected to increase the frequency and intensity of floods. The situation is further complicated by the Transboundary nature of water, making Transboundary cooperation on integrated flood risk management not only necessary, but highly beneficial as well. Unfortunately, numerous challenges hamper effective Transboundary cooperation in general and cooperation on Transboundary flood management in particular, thereby increasing vulnerability to floods. Flood Risk Management Strategies (FRMSs) are designed to make vulnerable urban regions more resilient to flooding. This likely requires changes in their institutional embedding. Insights into this institutional embedding of FRMSs so far is, however, rather limited and fragmented. In this paper we argue that such insights can be created by drawing upon and combining public administration and legal expertise. To make a start with the latter, we introduce the Transboundary Flood Risks Governance Arrangements (TFRGAs) approach. In the EU-funded STARFLOOD-project we will use this approach to carry out comparative research to further elaborate the approach