How an adaptive and flexible short-term flood planning can be beneficial - a UK case study application

Short term flood intervention planning includes identifying how the limited resources should be allocated to the most appropriate affected locations. The water level is an important factor for temporary flood protection planning for which adaptability of the plan to its changing future condition is regarded valuable. Moreover, flexibility in activation, delaying and replacement of the existing plans should be considered to mitigate the damages caused by future unknown condition. This research applies real options analysis which incorporates adaptability and flexibility in addressing “least-cost alternative”  location selection via multi-stage stochastic programming. We apply the proposed model to a case study in Eden catchment with nine different flood-affected cities with different degrees of uncertainty along Eden River in England. A multi-objective and mixed integer optimization model was formulated to solve on a scenario tree capable to choose most appropriate locations for deploying intervention measures of temporary flood protection. We examine the solution under various model parameters uncertainty and compare the results with the business as usual case presenting the benefits of proposed formulation in terms of expected damage and cost.