Flood Resilient Communities: A Framework and Case Studies

Internationally there is a growing call for building more resilient cities and for improving the resilience of our communities and critical infrastructure. This is in response to a realisation that the services we take for granted may be robust in the face of predictable hazards, but are actually extremely fragile in the face of unanticipated shocks. But what does building resilience actually mean and entail?

Flooding is a relatively predictable hazard that has the potential to affect all New Zealand towns and cities, and with the impacts of climate change becoming increasingly clear, the likelihood of major flood events (both land based, and coastal) affecting our communities and critical infrastructure is increasing.

This paper looks in detail at the concept of resilience, and draws on related research to propose a framework for assessing and improving resilience to flood hazards. The framework divides resilience into a number of broad dimensions: namely community, technical and organisational, and develops a series of specific principles within each of these dimensions.

The authors also discuss a range of terms related to resilience - such as risk management, vulnerability and sustainability and how they inter-relate. They also emphasise how the various fields of land use planning, infrastructure planning and natural hazard planning must work more closely together to, ultimately, make our communities more resilient to flooding.

A number of case studies are presented, which provide learnings from both successes and failures, in planning for and recovering from large flood events.