Foresight ‘Future Flooding USA’ Workshop: Washington DC, 15-19 September 2008
Flood Foresight USA: Scoping Document
Colin R Thorne University of Nottingham, UK
Edward P. Evans University of Nottingham, UK
Pete Rabbon US Army Corps of Engineers, USA
This document should be cited as:
Thorne, C.R., Evans, E.P., and Rabbon, P. (2008) with contributions byJim Hall, Robert Nicholls, Jon Parke, Edmund Penning-Rowsell, Nick Reynard, Paul Sayers, Jonathan Simm, Suresh Surendran, and Jon Wicks (UK Foresight team) and Todd Bridges, Bill Curtis, Jack Davis, Susan Durden, Jeff Harris, Rolf Olson, Edmond Russo, Martin Schultz, Eric Thaut and Kate White (US Corps team). Flood Foresight USA: Scoping Document. Report to the UK Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, UK Government Office for Science, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office,and US Army Corps of Engineers, based on the Foresight Mission to Washington DC (September 15-19, 2008),under DIUS Purchase Order Number 84001054, University of Nottingham, UK, 23p.
Context
The Foresight ‘Future Flooding’ report of 2004 (Evans et al. 2004a and b) in the UK is an example of scientific research being used to inform policy and decision making at a national and regional level. The approach and methodologies developed and applied in the project have elicited interest abroad, leading to seminars in China and Russia in 2005. The Chinese seminar has led, in turn, to a joint 3-year, Sino-UK project to examine the future of flood risk in the Taihu Basin around Shanghai that runs from 2006 to 2009.
In 2007, presentations on the Foresight ‘Future Flooding’ project at technical meetings of the US Army Corps of Engineers attended by senior personnel and representatives of the Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM) and the National Association of Flood and Stormwater Management Agencies (NAFSMA) stimulated interest in the United States of America concerning the transferability of the Foresight approach and the possible value of a Foresight ‘Future Flooding’ project in the USA.
To progress the ideas already discussed informally and in a preliminary fashion by scientists and engineers, a mission was performed by UK scientists and engineers with experience in flood foresight between September 15 and 19, 2008. The mission was performed under the auspices of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), in particular the British Consulate in Atlanta, and it benefited from sponsorship by the FCO, the UK Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills and the UK Government Office for Science. The mission included closed meetings with USACE scientists and engineers and Corps leadership, and a two-day workshop attended by US stakeholders and experts in flood risk management from a wide variety of Federal and State agencies.
The workshop was highly successful and attained all of its goals, and the
presentations made by both US and UK speakers have been supplied to the
sponsors. It was organised by Susan Durden and Jack Davis of the US team and Kerry Norton and Jon Parke of the UK team. It was thanks largely to their diligent efforts that the workshop came to fruition.
This document represents the main deliverable generated by the Foresight Mission and is being supplied to the UK sponsors and the USACE for their use.
Background – Flood risk in the USA
Federal disaster assistance outlays through the Disaster Relief Fund have grown drastically over the past three decades, increasing from an average annual outlay of $444M during the 1980s, to an average annual outlay of $3.75B during the past decade (expressed in constant 2005 dollars). (CRS, 2005).
Flood risk management defines flood risk as:
Flood Risk = f(probability, consequences)
This definition conveys the essential need for a partnership between the agencies, at all levels, responsible for a wide range of actions relevant to integrated flood risk management that seeks to manage down the consequences of flooding as well as reduce its probability of occurrence.
The Foresight ‘Future Flooding’ Project 2004
The Foresight project:
· used a structured framework which considered science-based scenarios of socioeconomic development and climate change to, “provide an indication of future risks from flooding and coastal erosion.”
· looked 30 to 100 years ahead in, “quantifying the possible scale of the challenges and providing a broad assessment of the different measures available to reduce future flood risks to acceptable levels.”
It considered two questions:
· How might the risks of flooding and coastal erosion change in the UK over the next 100 years?
· What are the options are available for Government and the private sector in responding to the future challenges?
It yielded two key messages:
· Continuing with existing policies is not an option—in three out of the four future scenarios considered, risk grows to unacceptable levels (Figure 1).
· Risk needs to be dealt with on a broad front—“we must either invest more in sustainable approaches to flood and coastal erosion management or learn to live with increased flooding.”
Figure 1. Annual Expected Damages due to flooding increase to unacceptable levels in three out of four future scenarios, with particularly significant increases in risk at the coast and in the major river floodplains by the 2080s.
The techniques and the ability to bring out these credible, easily understandable messages to senior, key stakeholders, in language which they found useful, was one of the most important achievements of the project. This is evidenced by the incorporation of the Foresight messages in UK FRM policy, UK land use policy, new research projects in key areas and a doubling of UK Treasury investment in integrated flood-risk management (IFRM) funding (Figure 2). Further proof lies in the durability of the messages. For example, following catastrophic UK flooding in summer 2007, Sir Michael Pitt (Pitt 2008) funded updating of the Foresight FCD project as part of a UK Cabinet Office review of lessons learned in the UK from the flood events (Evans et al. 2008).
Figure 2. Examples of the many policy and planning documents and studies that have followed from the Foresight ’Future Flooding’ Project (2004).
The US Backdrop
Floodplain Management 2050 (ASFPM 2008)
The theme of the 2007 Gilbert F. White National Flood Policy Forum was very relevant to Foresight issues in that it considered how flood risk in the USA might look in 2050. The main findings were:
·
· The U.S. is facing unprecedented change, increasing flood risk, and loss of natural systems.
· Gilbert F. White’s “Human Adjustment Factors” are still relevant to flood risk management but require expansion.
· Specifically, additional factors should be explored related to:
· Room for rivers and oceans.
· Personal responsibility.
· Geographic interdependencies.
· Awareness and education.
· There is a real need to evaluate U.S. risk and modify policy to meet the demands of 2050.
USACE Flood Risk Management Program
Vision: To lead collaborative, comprehensive and sustainable national flood risk management to improve public safety and reduce flood damages to our country.
Mission: To integrate and synchronize the ongoing, diverse flood risk management projects, programs and authorities of the US Army Corps of Engineers with counterpart projects, programs and authorities of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), other Federal agencies, state organizations and regional and local agencies.
Congressional Direction
2008 Appropriations Act
The Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008 requires a study to identify any procedural or legislative changes that may be warranted to allow the Corps of Engineers to be more effective in working with other Federal agencies, states and local governments and stakeholders in the management of flood risk.
Water Resources Development Act of 2007, Section 2032
This act includes the direction that:
… the President shall submit to Congress a report describing the vulnerability to damage from flooding, including the risk to human life; the risk to property; and the comparative risks faced by different regions of the United States.
It further states that:
…the report shall include an assessment of the flood risk reduction programs; the extent to which those programs may be encouraging development and economic activity in flood-prone areas; recommendations for improving those programs with respect to reducing and responding to flood risks; and proposals for implementing the recommendations.
Potential for a US Foresight-style project on future flood risks and their management
Purposes
The purposes of a Foresight-style project on future flooding would include:
· Assist in creating a better future by improving our capability to deliver IFRM that is cost effective and sustainable.
· Retain the focus of the UK Foresight project in substantiating and delivering the key message that if we invest more wisely in IFRM and start now, we will save money and reduce loss of life through flood damage reduction programs in the future.
· Describe current national flood risk and its regional distribution across the nation.
· Generate future scenarios for national flood risks in 2050-2100 under a base line condition of ‘business as usual’.
· Identify and examine options for flood damage reduction measures that could be used to respond to the increased risks under future scenarios.
· Explore the sustainability of possible flood risk reduction measures for 2050 to 2100 in terms of economic costs and benefits, environmental protection and social justice.
· Present the results in graphics, maps and key messages which are easily accessible to decision makers, policy makers, FRM professionals, stakeholders and the public.
Output criteria
It is very important that, from the beginning, everyone involved in the project, from the leader of the high level steering group to the most junior modeler, is fully aware of the criteria for the outcomes which will be produced through the project. These criteria include:
· Value added
- To the nation by creating a better, more sustainable future
- Study cost must be justified by the savings in flood damages
· Intergovernmental value
- Outcomes involve and are acceptable to all government agencies with FRM nexus
· Durability
- Long useful life
- Easy to update
· Alignment
- USACE programs (for example, Actions for Change and Wise Use of Floodplains)
- Federal partners’ strategic plans
- Next administration’s agenda
· Coordination
- Administration
- Congress
- States
- Local governments
· Collaboration
- Stakeholders
- Externally
· Cost effectiveness
- Analysis commensurate with the required detail of output
· Timeliness
- Leverage the present visibility of flooding
- Deliver outcomes in time for uptake to be effective in FRM by 2050
· Independency
- Impartial
- Objective
- Credible
· Visionary
- Innovative thinking
- Longterm perspective
In conceiving a possible Foresight ‘Future Flooding USA’ project, maximum use will be made of relevant ongoing research and study programs such as the Great Lakes IOC study, which includes futures work and flood risk reduction.
Setting up the project – partners, stakeholders, contributors and project team
The UK FCD project employed a carefully designed project structure. A fundamental principle of this was to fully engage key policy-level partners and stakeholders in the broader flood-related community, convince them of the relevance of the study’s key findings and to inform their actions. The UK partnership set up is shown in Figure 3 below as starting point for a possible US Foresight project:
Figure 3. Partnerships in the UK Foresight ‘Future Flooding’ Project (2004).
US partnering arrangements are bound to be different, and one of the most important initial tasks in any US Foresight project will be to set up the partnership and a communication packages in ways that will ensure that the stakeholders are fully involved and that key messages will be carried over into policy at least as well as they were in the UK. This corresponds to the concept of shared–vision planning.
USACE activities will reduce future flood risk, but it will be essential also to consider the actions of other agencies. This will be part of the framework for assessing the effectiveness of alternative FRM options and long term strategies. As the scope of a Foresight project is much broader than engineering, it will be necessary to define clearly the role of the USACE in the project and avoid any false appearance of mission creep. Also, it will be necessary to demonstrate that the project will be independently led and will be based on development and analysis of the best available scientific evidence.
In the UK the project was led by the Office of Science and Technology (now the Government Office for Science) and spanned the department of government responsible for flood risk policy (Department of Food and Rural Affairs - Defra), its operating agency (the Environment Agency), the department responsible for land use planning (Communities and Local Government), and the Her Majesty’s Treasury.
Technical approach
The analytical framework
The flooding system encompasses the physical and human systems that influence or are influenced by flooding. The 2004 project considered the flooding system in two elements: river and coastal flooding occur where water invades inhabited or developed areas from watercourses and the ocean; “intra-urban” flooding arises from rainfall events within urban areas that overwhelm the urban drainage system. Clearly, the flooding system involves many flooding mechanisms, and is illustrated by the system diagrams (Figure 4) reproduced below from the 2004 reports.
Figure 4: The flooding system. Upper image: river and coastal flooding system. Lower image: intra-urban flooding system (from Evans et al., 2004a).
In 2004 the terms ‘drivers’ and ‘responses’ were used for things that change the flooding system and, hence, future flood risk. They are illustrated in Figures 5 and 6. By definition:
Drivers – are phenomena that may change the state of the flooding system, such as climate change, urbanisation or changing agricultural practices, and
Responses – are measures implemented in order to reduce flood risk.
The distinction between drivers and responses is not always crisp; some drivers are under the control of flood managers and can, under some circumstances, be used as responses to rising flood risk. Conversely, responses can themselves become drivers in other circumstances – for example, the use of engineered flood defences to reduce flood risk in one town may adversely affect flood risk downstream and will therefore be a driver of flood risk in another town.