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The Economics and Management of Flood Risk in Germany

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Urban Water Management for Future Cities

Part of the book series: Future City ((FUCI,volume 12))

Abstract

Assessing the economic impacts of flooding is a crucial part of identifying appropriate flood risk management options as required by the EU flood management directive. This chapter describes methods for assessing economic flood damage. To begin, some fundamental issues are discussed: Which types of economic flood damage should be taken into account? What kind of information is necessary in general for assessing flood damage in monetary terms, and what is the general procedure for calculating economic flood damage ? Having clarified these questions, the methodological challenges posed by economic flood risk management are described. This includes the indirect impacts, i.e. induced loss to customers and suppliers of good and services damaged by floods, and intangible impacts, i.e. the impacts of flooding on mortality and morbidity and the environment. Ways to deal with the persistent uncertainty in damage and risk assessments are discussed in the following chapter. The findings in this chapter will be evaluated in relation to flood risk management practices in Germany, based on examples from Saxony.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In the floodings of Saxony, between 36% (2002) and 22.7% (2013) of the total damages were in the residential sector, i.e. damage to buildings and content damage. Cp. WWF (2007); DKKV (2015), p. 34.

  2. 2.

    In Saxony 2002, only 1.3% of direct, tangible damage affected agriculture and forest sites (IKSE 2004).

  3. 3.

    The value of a capital good is the present value of the income flow it generates over the rest of its life span (Georgescu-Roegen 1981, p. 220 ff.). Therefore, adding stock and flow values in a flood damage evaluation can lead to double counting (Rose 2004, p. 14, p.19; Bockarjova et al. 2004) and should be avoided.

  4. 4.

    The CONHAZ project, which ran from February 2010 to January 2012, identified knowledge gaps and research needs based on a review of existing methods for assessing the costs of various natural hazards in Europe (floods, droughts, coastal hazards and Alpine hazards; for a more detailed discussion, see Meyer et al. 2013).

  5. 5.

    The PRIMATE manual is available as a download on the UFZ website (www.ufz.de). For the free software, please send an email to the author.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Leipzig, Germany

    Volker Meyer & Reimund Schwarze

  2. European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany

    Reimund Schwarze

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  1. Volker Meyer
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  2. Reimund Schwarze
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Correspondence to Reimund Schwarze .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Sanitary Engineering and Waste Management, Leibniz University Hannover, Hanover, Germany

    Stephan Köster

  2. Department of Environmental and Planning Law, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig, Germany

    Moritz Reese

  3. Dep of Env Science and Engr, Tsinghua University, Bei**g, China

    Jian'e Zuo

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Meyer, V., Schwarze, R. (2019). The Economics and Management of Flood Risk in Germany. In: Köster, S., Reese, M., Zuo, J. (eds) Urban Water Management for Future Cities. Future City, vol 12. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01488-9_23

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