Unpacking notions of residents' responsibility in flood risk governance

Environmental disasters, and especially floods, are among today's biggest sustainability challenges. The number and intensity of floods are increasing, challenging current governance approaches. Governments worldwide are looking to diversify their flood risk management and adaptation strategies, among others, by increasing resident involvement...

Efficient or Fair? Operationalizing Ethical Principles in Flood Risk Management: A Case Study on the Dutch-German Rhine

Flood risk management decisions in many countries are based on decision-support frameworks which rely on cost-benefit analyses. Such frameworks are seldom informative about the geographical distribution of risk, raising questions on the fairness of the proposed policies. In the present work, we propose a new decision criterion that accounts...

Justice of compensation for spatial flood risk management – comparing the flexible Austrian and the structured Dutch approach

In view of the anticipated climate change, many countries face increasing risks of flooding. Since the end of the 20^th century, the traditional hard flood protection measures have been increasingly complemented with spatial flood risk reduction measures. These measures, though in the public interest and as such, benefitting many...

Bridging the legitimacy gap—translating theory into practical signposts for legitimate flood risk governance

Legitimacy is widely regarded as a founding principle of ‘good’ and effective governance, yet despite intense academic debate and policy discourse, the concept remains conceptually confusing and poorly articulated in practice. To bridge this gap, this research performed an interpretive thematic analysis of academic scholarship across public...