relation: https://frw.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/4103/
title: Building Flood Resilience on a Local Level
creator: Blankena, Celine
description: Dutch residents feel safe behind their dikes. Nevertheless, coastal cities are challenged by increasing flood risk due to the negative environmental impact of climate change and urbanization. In the field of flood risk management, there is a noticeable majority of transferring traditional technical flood control measures in policies from global North to global South countries. However, what can be learned from places where flood risk awareness is much higher due to more regular occurrences of flooding events? This qualitative research uses open-, semi-structured interviews, document analysis, and field trips to examine the response and recovery phase of the Multi-Layer Safety approach for the cities of Rotterdam and Semarang. Rotterdam is acknowledged for its network of flood-preventive hard infrastructural measures after the Great North Sea flood in 1953. Semarang is one of Indonesia’s most prominent cities suffering from coastal floods. The results point to a focus on technical, organizational, and financial measures to reduce flood risk in the case of Rotterdam, which leads to the lack of awareness by inhabitants about the flood risk. Contradictory regulations and practices in the city of Semarang focus on community capacities to develop flood resilience, which illustrates how residents ‘live with the water’. A flood event has to happen before response and resilient strategies occur. Rotterdam could learn from Semarang’s experiences that evacuations are not always necessary and that residents’ awareness and a recovery plan improves public knowledge of disaster information, which can minimize risks.
date: 2022
type: Thesis
type: NonPeerReviewed
format: text
language: en
identifier: https://frw.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/4103/1/UPLOADEN%20RUG%20-%20Celine%20Blankena%20final%20master%20thesis.pdf
identifier:   Blankena, Celine  (2022) Building Flood Resilience on a Local Level.  Master thesis.