National heatwave plans are aimed at reducing the avoidable human health consequences due to heatwaves, by providing warnings as well as improving communication between relevant stakeholders. The objective of this study was to assess the perceptions of key stakeholders within plans in Belgium and The Netherlands on their responsibilities, the partnerships, and the effectiveness of the local implementation in Brussels and Amsterdam.
Articles and reports
The following articles and reports are scientific based documents that mention the ENHANCE project.
Stakeholders’ Perception on National Heatwave Plans and Their Local Implementation in Belgium and The Netherlands
Large-scale application of the flood damage model RAilway Infrastructure Loss (RAIL)
Experience has shown that river floods can significantly hamper the reliability of railway networks and cause extensive structural damage and disruption. As a result, the national railway operator in Austria had to cope with financial losses of more than EUR 100 million due to flooding in recent years. Comprehensive information on potential flood risk hot spots as well as on expected flood damage in Austria is therefore needed for strategic flood risk management.
“Climate change: the necessary, the possible and the desirable”
In time with this year’s UNFCCC meeting in Lima, a group of leading scientists, under the coordination of the Earth League Secretariat based at the Climate Service Center 2.0 laid out in a joint paper the key elements of the ‘the necessary, the possible and the desirable’ in relation to climate change, stressing the profound opportunities for transformation we have before us.
Storm surge risk perception and resilience: A pilot study in the German North Sea coast
Resilience is defined as the capacity of a community to organise itself before, during and after a dangerous/hazardous event in order to minimise the impacts. A conceptual framework is proposed to assess the resilience of a community by understanding and integrating the institutional, legal and social capacities to cope and recover from a natural hazardous event in order to minimize the impacts in the short-term and to adapt to the risk in the long-term…
Evaluating Flood Resilience Strategies for Coastal Megacities
Recent flood disasters in the United States (2005, 2008, 2012); the Philippines (2012, 2013); and Britain (2014) illustrate how vulnerable coastal cities are to storm surge flooding. Floods caused the largest portion of insured losses among all catastrophes around the world in 2013
Changing mechanism of global water scarcity events: Impacts of socioeconomic changes and inter-annual hydro-climatic variability
Changes in available fresh water resources, together with changes in water use, force our society to adapt continuously to water scarcity conditions. Although several studies assess the role of long-term climate change and socioeconomic developments on global water scarcity, the impact of inter-annual climate variability is less understood and often neglected. This paper presents a global scale water scarcity assessment that accounts for both temporal changes in socioeconomic conditions and hydro-climatic variability over the period 1960–2000.
Sensitivity of water scarcity events to ENSO driven climate variability at the global scale
Globally, freshwater shortage is one of the most important risks for society. Changing hydro-climatic and socioeconomic conditions have aggravated water scarcity over the past decades. We present the first global scale sensitivity assessment of water scarcity and water availability to El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the most dominant signal of climate variability.
Reflections on the current debate on how to link flood insurance and disaster risk reduction in the European Union
Flood insurance differs widely in scope and form across Europe. Against the backdrop of rising flood losses, a debate about the role of EU policy in shaping the future of this compensation mechanism is led by policy-makers and industry. While the question of supply and demand is at the core of the debate, we argue that another key dimension is often overlooked: how to use insurance as a lever for risk reduction and prevention efforts. We investigate whether and how current EU policies influence flood insurance and how this interplays with the national policy level.
Combining hazard, exposure and social vulnerability to provide lessons for flood risk management
Flood risk assessments provide inputs for the evaluation of flood risk management (FRM) strategies. Traditionally, such risk assessments provide estimates of loss of life and economic damage. However, the effect of policy measures aimed at reducing risk also depends on the capacity of households to adapt and respond to floods, which in turn largely depends on their social vulnerability. This study shows how a joint assessment of hazard, exposure and social vulnerability provides valuable information for the evaluation of FRM strategies.
Estimating flood damage to railway infrastructure – the case study of the March River flood in 2006 at the Austrian Northern Railway
Models for estimating flood losses to infrastructure are rare and their reliability is seldom investigated although infrastructure losses might contribute considerably to the overall flood losses. In this paper, an empirical modelling approach for estimating direct structural flood damage to railway infrastructure and associated financial losses is presented.
