Improving Flood Risk Maps as a Means to Foster Public Participation and Raising Flood Risk Awareness: Toward Flood Resilient Communities (RISK MAP)

Despite long-lasting attempts to reduce vulnerabilities to natural hazards, the damages resulting from flooding are still increasing in Europe. The reasons for it are manifold: Beside river regulation and urbanisation, social and economic developments lead to an increased damage potential in many river basins across Europe. Since in many respects, floods are beyond the immediate control of human beings and this despite an enhanced ability to predict the occurrence of floods, an increased resilience of communities at risk seems vital for reducing suffering and damages. It is the main objective of RISK MAP to contribute to the enhancement of communities’ resilience by improving risk maps. To reach this overall objective RISK MAP departs from the assumption that risk maps are not only a means to inform citizens about future risks; they are also a possibility to stimulate public participation between governmental institutions, private companies and associations, alliances, interests groups, and citizens. More specifically, four central objectives were identified to be addressed in RISK MAP comprehensively:

• Development of appropriate stakeholder participation processes;
• Improving the content of risk maps by enhancing a multicriteria risk mapping tool;
• Improving the visualisation of risk maps in order to produce user-friendly and understandable risk maps;
• Gaining in-depth knowledge and providing quantitative information related to the necessary content of risk maps.