4th European Conference on Flood Risk Management

The special session 'LAND4FLOOD: Coping with the challenges of using private land for flood water storage' will take place virtually on Wednesday 23 June 2021 from 14:00 to 15:30.

The session will be led by András Kis, Gábor Ungvári, with contribution from: Lenka Slavíková, Nejc Bezak, Thomas Hartmann, Piotr Matczak

The programme of this special session will include:

Within the realm of flood management increasing emphasis is placed on nature based solutions (NBS), supplementing flood defense via technical (grey) infrastructure. NBS measures generally take the form of upstream land use change for water retention or temporary flood water storage along rivers. While they often offer attractive alternatives to or combination with technical solutions, they also require much more land and suitable land is frequently owned privately. Negotiating flood related land use agreements with land owners can be challenging, raising critical questions about damage compensation, financing schemes, cultural attitudes, property rights and trust in institutions, among others. All these issues are critical from an often missing, comprehensive regulatory perspective.

The Land4Flood community of scholars and practitioners is based on the shared understanding that the recent demand for flood defense by nature based solutions can only be accomplished if the engineering, legal and economic aspects of planning are mutually considered. Where physically effective measures’s assessed impacts on the landscape gives basis for the clarification of rights and duties behind complex land management arrangements that provides the preconditions using economic tools effectively to get over the information asymmetries stakeholders face in reaching financially viable agreements that will unlock the implementation and operation of such a multi purpose green infrastructure on private land. 

This special session will inspect actual cases, including good examples as well as failed initiatives.

Pre-recorded short presentations will describe relevant elements of the Land4Flood approach. In the session a 15’ warm up presentation will be followed by a panel discussion involving the presenters. Our goal is to raise awareness and discuss recommendations in an interactive way involving the audience, toward concluding mutually attractive agreements between beneficiaries (or the state on their behalf) and private land owners in order to enhance flood management.

Please use the 'add to Schedule' button on the Special Session Programme, to register your interest in participating in this special session.

For more information visit the Special Session Hub and the website http://www.land4flood.eu/land4flood-project/. To access this page, you will need to be registered online. If you haven't done so yet, please Register Now Here.