The floods in the Netherlands in the summer of 2021 led to severe economic damage and losses in the affected area. A first estimate in September 2021 showed that more than 2,500 houses, more than 5,000 inhabitants and around 600 businesses were affected. Using the Dutch standard Flood Damage and Loss Model (SSM2017), and based on figures from international literature, the total damage in the Netherlands is estimated in the order of € 350 – 600 million. Physical damage to houses and businesses, business interruption, damage to infrastructure and crop losses were the most substantial. The differences in damage to individual structures (residential and commercial) were large. The estimated damage in the affected area clearly exceeds the damage of the Meuse River floods in 1993 and 1995 which occurred in the same region (converted to 2021 prices: around € 200 million and € 125 million, respectively, excluding damage due to business interruption). It is important to note that the largest damages and losses in 2021 occurred in the smaller regional rivers, mainly in the Geul floodplain, while in 1993 and 1995 most damage and losses were recorded in the Meuse floodplain.

The 2021 summer flooding was an extremely rare event, driven by precipitation extremes that exceed Dutch design levels for flood protection of relatively small rivers and waterways. However, similar events in neighboring locations cannot be ruled out in the near future. The implications of such extreme rainfall amounts will vary by region, subject to local topography, water systems, and societal exposure. We explore the diversity of potential flood impacts induced by a similar event by constructing impact-oriented event storylines for characteristic water management regions in the Netherlands. The plausibility of the storylines is underlined by using physical evidence, proven impact-modelling concepts, and expert judgment successfully assessing the (sometimes unexpected) outcomes. The approach supports impact assessment and risk management of extraordinary rainfall and flood events. The outcomes show the relevance for crisis management and spatial policies, and confirms the need for in depth-analysis to assess concrete adaptation options.

To prevent floods from becoming disasters, social vulnerability must be integrated into flood risk management. We advocate that the welfare of different societal groups should be included by adding recovery capacity, impacts of beyond-design events, and distributional impacts.

Flood simulations are important for flood (fatality) risk assessment. This article provides insight into the sensitivity of flood fatality risks to the model resolution of flood simulations and to several uncertain parameters in the loss of life model used. A case study is conducted for river flooding in a polder in the Netherlands (the Bommelerwaard) where the Dutch approach for loss of life estimation is applied. Flood models with resolutions of 100, 25, and 5 m are considered. Results show locally increased mortality rates in higher resolution simulations nearby structures including road embankments, dikes, and culverts. This causes a larger maximum individual risk value (annual probability of death for a person due to flooding) which has consequences for safety standards based on the individual risk criterion. Mortality rate in the breach zone is also affected by representations of buildings as solid objects versus as roughness elements. Furthermore, changes in the loss of life estimation approach via alternative ways of including people's behaviour, building characteristics, and age of the population, have a significant impact on flood fatality risk. Results from this study can be used to support future risk assessments and decision making with respect to safety standards.

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 for the distribution of risk reduction and apply it to support flood risk management decisions on a transboundary stretch of the Rhine River. Three types of interventions are considered: embankment heightening, making Room for the River, and changing the discharge distribution of the river branches. The analysis involves solving a flood risk management problem according to four alternative formulations, based on different ethical principles. Formulations based on cost optimization lead to very poor performances in some areas for the sake of reducing the overall aggregated costs. Formulations that also include equity criteria have different results depending on how these are defined. When risk reduction is distributed equally, very poor economic performance is achieved. When risk is distributed equally, results are in line with formulations based on cost optimization, while a fairer risk distribution is achieved. Risk reduction measures also differ, with the cost optimization approach strongly favoring the leverage of changing the discharge distribution and the alternative formulations spending more on embankment heightening and Room for the River, to rebalance inequalities in risk levels. The proposed method advances risk-based decision-making by allowing to consider risk distribution aspects and their impacts on the choice of risk reduction measures.

Most alluvial plains in the world are protected by flood defences, for example, embankments, whose primary aim is to reduce the probability of flooding of the protected areas. At the same time, however, the presence of embankments at one area influences hydraulic conditions of downstream areas located on the same river. These hydraulic interactions are often neglected in current flood risk management. The aim of this study is to explicitly acknowledge hydraulic interactions and investigate their impact on establishing optimal embankment heights along a stretch of the IJssel River. We find that the current approach leads to a single solution, while taking into account hydraulic interactions substantially expands the number of promising solutions. Furthermore, under a reference scenario, the current approach is in fact suboptimal with respect to both downstream locations and the system as a whole. Under uncertainty, it performs adequately from a system viewpoint, but poorly for individual locations, mostly due to risk overestimation downstream. Overall, the current approach proves to be too short-sighted, because spatial trade-offs among locations are neglected and alternative solutions remain hidden. Acknowledging the effect of hydraulic interactions provides policy makers with a broader and more comprehensive spectrum of flood risk management strategies.

To make informed flood risk management (FRM) decisions in large protected river systems, flood risk and hazard analyses should include the potential for dike breaching. 'Load interdependency' analyses attempt to include the system-wide effects of dike breaching while accounting for the uncertainty of both river loads and dike fragility. The intensive stochastic computation required for these analyses often precludes the use of complex hydraulic models, but simpler models may miss spatial inundation interactions such as flows that 'cascade' between compartmentalised regions and overland flows that 'shortcut' between river branches. The potential for these interactions in the Netherlands has previously been identified, and so a schematisation of the Dutch floodplain and protection system is here developed for use in a load interdependency analysis. The approach allows for the spatial distribution of hazard to be quantified under various scenarios and return periods. The results demonstrate the importance of including spatial inundation interactions on hazard estimation at three specific locations, and for the system in general. The general modelling approach can be used at a local scale to focus flood-risk analysis and management on the relevant causes of inundation, and at a system-wide scale to estimate the overall impact of large-scale measures.

Rivers typically flow through multiple flood-protected areas which are clearly interconnected, as risk reduction measures taken at one area, e.g. heightening dikes or building flood storage areas, affect risk elsewhere. We call these interconnections 'hydraulic interactions'. The current approach to flood risk management, however, neglects hydraulic interactions for two reasons: They are uncertain and, furthermore, considering them would require the design of policies not only striving for risk reduction, but also accounting for risk transfers across flood-protected areas. In the present paper, we compare the performance of policies identified according to the current approach with those of two alternative formulations: One acknowledging hydraulic interactions and the other also including an additional decision criterion to account for equity in risk distribution across flood-protected areas. Optimal policies are first identified under deterministic hydraulic interactions, and, next, they are stress-tested under uncertainty. We found that the current approach leads to a false sense of equal risk distribution. It does, however, perform efficiently when a risk-averse approach towards uncertain hydraulic interactions is taken. Accounting for hydraulic interactions in the design of policies, instead, increases efficiency and both efficiency and equity when hydraulic interactions are considered deterministically and as uncertain, respectively.

The central issue for authorities (as well as the public) is how and when to respond to forecasted extreme water levels on rivers, lakes and along the coast and large-scale flooding is an actual risk. The decision-making process is influenced by contradicting information, overloads and gaps in information, rumours, uncertainties in forecasts, the consequences of a flood and the effectiveness of measures. Emergency measures can be taken to reduce the probability of flooding(e.g. placing sand bags), other measures can be taken to reduce the consequences of a flooding (such as evacuation of inhabitants). For many of these measures, decisions are made days or hours prior to the expected moment of occurrence of the flooding. Using forecasts of water levels, by definition uncertain, and forecasts of the strength of levees, decisions can be made based on the acceptability of the actual flood risk level. The concept of risk can be used to prioritise measures in case of limited time.

The concept of resilience is used by many in different ways: as a scientific concept, as a guiding principle, as inspirational ‘buzzword’, or as a means to become more sustainable. Next to the academic debate on meaning and notions of resilience, the concept has been widely adopted and interpreted in policy contexts, particularly related to climate change and extreme weather events. In addition to having a positive connotation, resilience may cover aspects that are missed in common disaster risk management approaches. Although the precise definition of resilience may remain subject of discussion, the views on what is important to consider in the management of extreme weather events do not differ significantly. Therefore, this paper identifies the key implications of resilience thinking for the management of extreme weather events and translates these into five practical principles for policy making.

Knowledge on the different components of flood risk has much improved over the last decades, but research which fully takes into account not only the interactions between those components but also between different areas in a catchment or delta is still rare. Integrated analyses based on a complete system's approach at sufficiently large scale will improve our understanding of how flood risk systems with flood protection infrastructure in place behave under extreme conditions, it may help to develop sensible long-term strategies, and allows us to better prepare for flood events of all magnitudes. To illustrate the relevance of a hydrodynamic system's approach for flood risk management we analyse the effect of defence breaches on flood risks elsewhere along the lower Rhine River and discuss the use of this knowledge for flood risk management.