Assessing the limits of adaptation to riverine flood risk

As climate change and urbanization in low-lying areas increase flood risk, accelerated flood adaptation by households is urgently required. Households may flood proof or elevate their homes, in addition to flood protection by the government and insurance that covers residual risk. However, there are limits to the adaptability of societies (Aerts et al. 2024). For instance, social vulnerability factors such as low income or high age may reduce households’ adaptation efforts, leading to higher physical vulnerability of their homes. When societies stop implementing additional adaptation, risk may become ‘intolerable’, and people may have no other option than to leave the area. At this point, ‘adaptation limits’ are reached. We will present a concept of how to quantitatively assess where and when the limits of flood adaptation are reached and how these are shaped by vulnerability dynamics. This concept will be implemented in the framework of the ERC Synergy grant LIMIT2ADAPT by developing a global model for simulating flood adaptation limits by integrating a flood-risk model with an adaptation decision agent-based model and by assessing historical time series of social and physical vulnerability and flood risk for four selected river basins, using exposure-, survey- and census data. This information is crucial for prioritizing adaptation.

 

Reference

Aerts, J. C. J. H., Bates, P. D., Botzen, W. J. W., de Bruijn, J., Hall, J. W., van den Hurk, B., Kreibich, H., Merz, B., Muis, S., Mysiak, J., Tate, E., Berkhout, F. (2024): Exploring the limits and gaps of flood adaptation. - Nature Water, 2, 719-728. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-024-00274-x