SUFRI - Sustainable Strategies of Urban Flood Risk Management with non-structural Measures to cope with the Residual Risk

SUFRI is part of the ERA-Net CRUE, a research network with the vision to establish border conditions for a European research space for the tasks of flood risk management. In the recent past, flood events occurred ever more frequently, and with snowballing effects for the landscape and its habitants. As a result of the current situations in many European cities that relate to flooding the demand of the population for absolute safety becomes top priority. In terms of the implementation of the Floods Directive in 2007 a broad basis of knowledge and tools, as well as the development of improved strategies for flood risk management are required. Particularly in regard to urban areas flood protection and retention are more problematical than in rural areas due to limited space in combination with a high density of population. Flood analyses have shown that structural measures of flood protection are limited applicable and that absolute protection is not feasible. The residual flood protection has to be achieved with non-structural measures such as forecast models, risk communication, and disaster control. Improving the risk awareness and increasing, thus, the public participation, respectively, is essential for coping with the effects in order to achieve an effective flood management. This is what SUFRI targets at.