Risk assessment and water management

In order to implement water management in a sustainable way, the related decisionmaking processes have to take the ecological and socio-economic consequences into account. In the Netherlands, policy makers struggle with the question how they can deal with risks associated with flooding. Flood prevention is one of the pillars of water management that aims at reducing the likelihood of flooding and hence its dramatic socio-economic consequences. This paper presents some results of a research project sponsored by the Dutch Ministry of Water management in order to develop a Risk Assessment Approach that assists decision-makers in dealing with the risk of flooding. The article shows that dealing with risk in decision-making related to water management has two distinct dimensions. The first dimension is the incorporation of risk in the process of valuation of the socio-economic effects. The second dimension is the incorporation of the valued socio-economic effects into the decision-making process. Looking at the second dimension explores the different ways in which the outcomes of valuation processes can be taken into account. The article shows that different attitudes towards risk determine to a large extent how the valued effects are assessed. This element has been widely discussed in literature. However, the results are innovative in a way that they also show that risk attitudes interfere with the outcome of the valuation process. The article concludes by presenting a Risk Assessment Approach that acknowledges the different dimensions of risk and the different kinds of socio-economic impacts of flooding and that can be used to assist decision-makers in dealing with the risk of flooding.