Towards climate-change proof flood risk management

Abstract

Especially in low-lying deltaic areas, a sound adaptation policy is urgently needed, because relying on a global mitigation policy for climate change is way too risky. Both the Netherlands’ policy response and our research therefore focus on adaptation. In the Netherlands, climate change is given due attention for about two decades already, which now culminates in our current research for ‘Knowledge for Climate’ (KfC). Parallel to the research agenda, various policy initiatives were taken. The most important is the Delta Prgramme, which can be considered the national authorities’ response to an advice by the 2nd Delta Committee on climate-change related problems and needs. Next, the joint water boards also initiated a combined research and management programme, called Delta Proof. This can be considered the regional authorities’ response to the potential impacts of climate change. Obviously, we constantly tuned our research agenda to the research needs of these national policy and regional management programmes. In this context, we aim to add to the vast pool of knowledge on the subject of climate-change proof flood risk management and co-operate with the many research groups involved in the Delta Programme and Delta Proof. In our report, we try to give due reference to all our colleagues from outside KfC while still emphasizing our own contribution to the research progress.