Decision-making in the case of a flood-threat
Lex Veerhuis (HKV Lijn in Water)
Bas Kolen (TU Delft - Safety and Security Science, HKV Lijn in Water)
Matthijs Kok (HKV Lijn in Water, TU Delft - Hydraulic Structures and Flood Risk)
D. Riedstra (Ministerie van Infrastructuur en Waterstaat)
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Abstract
Design-criteria for flood-defences have a legal character in the Netherlands. Formerly, these flood protection standards were based on design-waterlevels, where a flood defence was implicitly supposed not to fail below this waterlevel. Since knowledge regarding dike-failure improved, a new risk approach has been developed based on a social cost-benefit analysis which addresses a monetary value to a (prevented) fatality. Also, loss of life is part of the risk analysis. The main improvement of the new approach is the explicit inclusion of failure probabilities in flood-risk calculations. A recent floodrisk study showed the risk of flooding for some regions in the Netherlands is larger than previously thought [Rijkswaterstaat 2015].