Flood Resilience of Private Properties (Routledge Special Issues on Water Policy and Governance)

Flood Resilience of Private Properties examines the division and balance of responsibilities between the public and the private when discussing flood resilience of private properties.

Flooding is an expensive climate-related disaster and a threat to urban life. Continuing development in flood-prone zones compound the risks. Protecting all properties to the same standards is ever more challenging. Research has focused on improved planning and adapting publicly-owned infrastructure such as streets, evacuation routes, and retention ponds. However, damages often happen on private land. To realize a flood-resilient city, owners of privately-owned residential houses also need to act. Measures such as mobile barriers and backwater valves or avoiding vulnerable uses in basements can make homes more flood-resilient. But private owners may be unaware of flooding risks or may lack the means and knowledge to act. Incentives may be insufficient, while fragmented or unclear property rights and responsibilities entrench inertia. The challenge is motivating homeowners to take steps. Political and societal systems influence the action citizens are prepared to take and what they expect their governments to do. The responsibility for implementing such measures is shared between the public and the private domain in different degrees in different countries.

This book will be of great interest to scholars of water law, property rights, flood risk management and climate adaptation. This book was originally published as a special issue of Water International.

Thomas Hartmann is Associate Professor at Wageningen University, the Netherlands, and he teaches at J.E.P. University Ústí and Laben, Czechia, and Bonn University, Germany. He combines an engineering perspective with socio-political approaches to flood risk management and land policies and has published numerous papers, books and special issues on these topics.

Willemijn van Doorn-Hoekveld is Assistant Professor at the Utrecht Centre for Water, Oceans and Sustainability Law, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She does research in public law, water law and liability law, where she focuses on flood resilience and recovery.

Helena F.M.W. van Rijswick is Full Professor of European and Dutch Water Law and director of the Centre for Water, Oceans and Sustainability Law at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She focuses on water law within the broader field of environmental, spatial planning and nature conservation law from a European, constitutional, and administrative legal and interdisciplinary perspective.

Tejo Spit is Full Professor in Urban and Regional Planning at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. He specializes in land policy, planning methodology, infrastructure planning and administrative aspects of spatial planning.