The Residual Risks of Extreme Floods: A Challenge for Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (RREFlood Project)

Wednesday, March 9, 2022

Anna Serra-Llobet, Ph.D.

Researcher, UC Berkeley, Center for Catastrophic Risk Management

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PRESENTATION OVERVIEW

Physical exposure to flood risks has dramatically increased during the second half of the 20th century, primarily because of the occupation of flood-prone land which increases the exposure of human populations to devastating floods. People who live behind protective levees are considered to be ‘out of the official flood hazard area’ and may assume they are safe from flooding, even though they are still at risk in case of extreme events. Low-probability, high-consequence floods can wipe out many years of progress towards the Sustainable Developments Goals (SDGs). This presentation will introduce the RREFlood Project. Through interviews with stakeholders, workshops with experts and the analysis of specific case studies in five countries, the RREFlood Project brings together experts from different universities and disciplines to facilitate advances in knowledge and tools in support of SDG-centered residual flood risk management. Preliminary results show that one of the main challenges to assess and map residual flood risk is related to how to include the influence of climate change in the models used to define the potential hazard area. Regarding residual risk management approaches, we have seen that the effective implementation of policies with similar goals (e.g., reduce exposure in high hazard zone with land use planning tools) is very different in the five countries analyzed. This is in part due to cultural attitudes. Although some of these findings might not be surprising, they have not been documented before in the particular context of residual risk.

PRESENTER
Anna Serra-Llobet is an environmental scientist whose research concerns to flood risk management policies. Anna Serra-Llobet received her PhD in Environmental Sciences from the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 2011. After finishing her PhD, she interned at the Directorate General for the Environment at the European Commission (EU) in Brussels, working on the analysis of EU funded research related to hydro-meteorological risks (floods and droughts) and vulnerability assessment in Europe. Currently she is a researcher at the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management of the University of California at Berkeley, conducting research on sustainable flood management strategies in the US and the EU.