DHI’s Flood Toolbox provides municipalities and countries with powerful tools for a sustainable flood risk and river basin management. It covers flood estimation and assessment as well as damage assessment. Moreover, it provides an economic estimation of the flood`s consequences. Policy makers will be able to make decisions which are based on high quality results applying this Toolbox.
Anthropogenic climate change is expected to increase both the frequency and magnitude of heavy or even catastrophic floods, endangering lives and livelihoods as well as causing heavy economic losses. In addition, floods can have severe environmental consequences, for example when installations holding large quantities of toxic chemicals are inundated or wetland areas destroyed. Therefore the EU Flood Directive calls for a timely and sustainable management of areas at risk (see Box 1).
Box 1: EU FD 2007/60/EC
Between 1998 and 2004, Europe suffered over 100 major damaging floods, including the catastrophic floods along the Danube and Elbe rivers in summer 2002. Since 1998, floods in Europe have caused some 700 deaths, the displacement of about half a million people and at least €25 billion in insured economic losses.
To counteract these dangers, the EU Flood Directive (FD 2007/60/EC) aims to reduce and manage the risks that floods pose to human health, the environment, infrastructure, cultural heritage and economic activity. The Directive requires Member States to first carry out a preliminary assessment by 2011 to identify the river basins and associated coastal areas at risk of flooding. For such zones, they would then need to draw up flood risk maps by 2013 and establish flood risk management plans focused on prevention, protection and preparedness by 2015. The Directive applies to inland waters as well as all coastal waters across the whole territory of the EU.
DHI is well prepared to help regional water authorities to fulfill the requirements of the EU Flood Directive with its Flood Toolbox and the modeling software MIKE by DHI, comprising the most advanced modelling, GIS mapping and Flood Risk Assessment tools.
The Flood Toolbox consists of five major components (Fig. 1), including a Flood Damage Assessment Tool to calculate the economic damage of selected areas and analyze the prioritization of measures and a tool for the generation of standardized flood maps.
Fig. 1: Components and workflow in the Flood Toolbox
“The Flood Toolbox and MIKE by DHI offers a complete solution, bundled with DHI`s experience and professionalism in handling flood projects”, says Philipp Bluszcz from DHI Germany. “Even though centered around the EU Flood Directive, the outreach of DHI`s Flood Toolbox is much wider: Water authorities outside the EU will profit from the tools when they have to handle similar flood related tasks, and the DHI group itself will improve and speed-up workflows in various flood-related projects.”
The Flood Toolbox is the result of a close cooperation between the DHI offices in Germany, Czech Republic and Denmark under Germany´s general management.
 |
|
 |
Fig. 2: Floods pose a major risk to urban and rural life, with flood magnitudes as well as frequencies expected to increase following climate change.
|