A Socio-Economic Impacts Assessment Procedure for Flood Management Decision Making in the Yangtze River Catchment, China

摘要

A socio-economic impacts assessment procedure has been developed to determine the comparative impacts of deliberately flooding one or more of 40 detention basins within the middle reach of the Yangtze River in China. Its development was undertaken as part of the Yangtze River Flood Control Management Project (YRFCMP) jointly sponsored by the Governments of Australia, through its aid agency (AusAID) and the People’s Republic of China. A literature review was undertaken to consider the elements of flood damage analysis, social conditions that contribute to that damage and different scales of analysis. The range of assets at risk were identified for a test case detention basin with known data. Relationships were developed between known micro-scale data on those assets and a few key medium scale parameters that are common to all detention basins (such as population, total area, agricultural area, storage volume and control levels). Elements of the social fabric within detention basins were similarly identified and each element was “weighted” subjectively to derive a social impact index. All available data were then assembled into a spreadsheet to estimate the direct costs, monthly and total indirect costs, and a social impact index. The procedure developed was tested against known results for one detention basin and then was applied to each detention basin in turn. The results have been transferred to a flood control structures database for later access by the YRFCMP’S Decision Support System