Emergency Evacuation Behavior in Small Island Developing States: Hurricane Irma in Sint Maarten

Disasters triggered by natural hazards are becoming more frequent and more intense, causing damage to infrastructure and causing loss of life. One way to reduce disaster risk is by evacuating the hazardous area. However, despite the amount of literature that exists on evacuation behavior, there is still a lack of agreement on which variables...

Assessing socioeconomic vulnerability after a hurricane: A combined use of an index-based approach and principal components analysis

Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are vulnerable to sea-level rise and hydro-meteorological hazards. In addition to the efforts to reduce the hazards, a holistic strategy that also addresses the vulnerability and exposure of residents and their assets is essential to mitigate the impacts of such hazards. Evaluating the socioeconomic...

Exploring trade-offs among the multiple benefits of green-blue-grey infrastructure for urban flood mitigation

Climate change is presenting one of the main challenges to our planet. In parallel, all regions of the world are projected to urbanise further. Consequently, sustainable development challenges will be increasingly concentrated in cities. A resulting impact is the increment of expected urban flood risk in many areas around the globe....

Flood risk management in Sint Maarten–A coupled agent-based and flood modelling method

Disaster risk reduction is a major concern of small island developing states. Measures to reduce risk should not only be based on the magnitude of physical hazard, but also on the exposure and vulnerability of communities. In this article, we examine flood risk management policies in the Caribbean island of Sint Maarten using coupled agent-based...

A coupled flood-agent-institution modelling (CLAIM) framework for urban flood risk management

In this paper, we describe a modelling framework that allows the integration of human and physical components of flood risk. Within this framework, flood risk management is conceptualized as a coupled human-flood system. The human subsystem includes individuals and their behaviour and institutions that shape human-flood interaction. The...

Assessing the Co-Benefits of green-blue-grey infrastructure for sustainable urban flood risk management

Green-blue infrastructures in urban spaces offer several co-benefits besides flood risk reduction, such as water savings, energy savings due to less cooling usage, air quality improvement and carbon sequestration. Traditionally, these co-benefits were not included in decision making processes for flood risk management. In this work we present...

Holistic Flood Risk Assessment In Coastal Areas: The PEARL Approach

Coastal floods are one of the most dangerous and harmful natural hazards affecting urban areas adjacent to shorelines. The present paper discusses the FP7-ENV-2013 EU funded PEARL (Preparing for Extreme And Rare events in coastaL regions) project which brings together world leading expertise in both the domain of hydro-engineering and risk...