Adaptive flooding management in coastal systems: how to integrate risk management in adaptive planning processes

Losses and damages in vulnerable territories, like coastal areas, are increasing for the frequency and severity of natural disasters often linked to extreme weather events. The problem of flooding in these territories is strengthened by the global sea level rise due to climate change. To respond to the risk, it is necessary that these territories continue to modify their behavior and consider the need to adapt to future climate conditions. Working on a scenario of climate change means to think in strategies working on the direction of social, economic, and environmental dynamics in evolution, according to a new and mature sense of development (Folke et al., 2003). To allow realities to adapt, it is necessary to build a more dynamic system able to deal with new and challenging situations (Adger et al., 2005). Currently, the main problem related to the management of natural hazards is that the response to the more frequent disasters is still mostly reactive rather than proactive. Coastal systems, particularly affected by the problem of sea level rise, need new planning approaches, able to build resilient and less vulnerable territories and communities. In this sense, the purpose of this work is to generate a new adaptive planning process able to work, at the same time, as a risk management instrument. Adaptive flooding management approach, through multi-stakeholder engagement and dialogue, is capable to reduce and manage current and emerging risks of flooding and will increase the ability to respond to the threats of long-term climate change increasing resilience (Tompkins et al., 2004). The generation of such kind of adaptive risk management process will be constructed investigating the social memory in local societies and in decision makers. Social memory can be articulated according to four characteristics. They were constructed considering literature on social-ecological systems in relation to the role of social memory in learning processes. Within decision making processes, learning takes place through several incremental iterations in subsequent cycles. The identified characteristics of each iteration are i) knowledge, ii) awareness, iii) communication and iv) collaboration. This investigation will help, on the one hand, to understand the level of flooding risk perception in local society and, on the other hand, to understand the level of awareness that decision makers have concerning the risk of flooding. The instrument that should be used is the questionnaire, a quantitative tool, which has the advantage of being able to be administered to a large sample and, therefore, to obtain a huge number of data. Although the development of new adaptive planning processes as a mean to manage flooding risk is a complex process, this work aims to generate it. It also highlights the necessity to integrate social aspects with technical once as a response to the increase of frequency and severity of natural disasters, like as flooding, strengthened by the global sea level rise due to climate change.