In 2015 several damaging floods occurred in Europe, among which most recently the floods in Ireland, the UK and Norway. In Southern Europe, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Spain, and France experienced floods, while floods in central Sweden forced people to evacuate their homes. For a complete overview, please click here. In May, an earlier JRC study found an alarming increase in flood extremes in Europe. The institute also indicated that river floods in Europe could directly affect more than half a million people a year by 2050, as compared to about 200 thousand today, which could mean that related annual damages climb from €5.3 billion today to up to €40 billion in 2050, due to the combined effect of climatic change and socio-economic growth (more on this can be found here). These disasters and trends demonstrate the urgency of managing flood risk. At the same time, stakeholders in flood risk management continue to or are taking important steps forward, e.g., in the implementation of the Flood Directive and the UN Disaster Risk Reduction programme – and in September of this year, the European Commission launched a new in-house Disaster Risk Management Knowledge Centre. The STAR-FLOOD project contributes to this by analyzing how to strengthen and redesign current flood risk governance arrangements in six European countries.
The STAR-FLOOD researchers wish you all a lovely holiday season and dry feet in 2016!
Our project has entered its final phase – all deliverables must be submitted by March 31st, 2016. These deliverables will include our final findings and recommendations on policy design principles for flood risk governance arrangements and their implications for policies and law at the level of the EU, its member states, regional authorities, and public-private partnership, the practitioners guidebook and a final conference. We will continue to do our utmost best to produce high quality insights in how to improve flood risk management in order to make a difference in science, policy and practice.