Floods emergency management: the value of potential and actual damage estimation

摘要

Emergency management (intended here from emergency planning to reaction) is a crucial aspect of risk management, allowing us to handle residual risk. Therefore, its economic convenience is an important piece of information in designing flood risk management strategies. This paper seeks to answer the following questions: How expected damage reduction due to emergency management can be estimated? Which analyses are required? Are there available tools in literature? In the paper, a framework is provided to describe the process of emergency management and preventive actions leading to damage reduction. The latter are differently handled according to whether they are addressed to reduce the hazard or exposure/vulnerability. The framework is then applied to a real case study. Results suggest that damage reduction estimation is possible, even though available models still require further improvement, in terms of transferability and required data/knowledge. On the other hand, results show the utility of the information supplied by this kind of analysis for decision makers.