Flexibility in Adaptation Planning : When, Where and How to Include Flexibility for Increasing Urban Flood Resilience

The magnitude and urgency of the need to adapt to climate change is such that addressing it has been taken up by the United Nations as one of the sustainable development goals - Goal 13 (SDG13) in 2015. SDG13 emphasises the need to strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate related hazards and natural disasters. Coping with urban floods is one of the major needs of climate adaptation, where integration of climate change responses into flood risk management policies, strategies and planning at international, national, regional and local levels is now the norm. However, much of this integration lacks effectiveness or real commitment from stakeholders involved in adaptation planning and implementation. Hence this research has focused on integrating flexibility based adaptation responses into an urban flood risk management context. The research has synthesised flexible adaptation practices from several disciplines including information technology, automobile and aerospace manufacturing. The outcomes of the research are brought together in a framework for structuring local adaptation responses and an adaptation planning process based on flexibility concepts. The outcomes provide a way to assist with the identification of the appropriate nature and type of flexibility required; where flexibility can best be incorporated; and when is the most appropriate time to implement the flexible adaptation responses in the context of urban flooding.

Mohanasundar Radhakrishnan comes from an agrarian society in Tamil Nadu, India. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from University of Madras in 2002 and MSc. degree in Municipal Water and Infrastructure from IHE Delft in 2009. He worked as a design engineer and was involved in the hydraulic design of drinking water distribution networks and bulk water transmission main in various water supply schemes in India. Mohanasundar is now associated with IHE Delft’s Flood resilience chair group of Water Science and Engineering Department as a full time PhD student, researching on embedding flexibility in Urban Flood Risk Management systems. His PhD research was funded by Government Of Australia through CRC for Water sensitive cities, a research initiative which brings together the inter-disciplinary research expertise and thought-leadership to undertake research that will revolutionise water management in Australia and overseas.