Due to a number of recent high-profile flood events and the apparent threatfrom global warming, governments and their agencies are under pressure tomake proactive investments to protect people living in floodplains. However,adopting a proactive approach as a universal strategy is not affordable. Ithas been argued that delaying expensive and essentially irreversible capitaldecisions could be a prudent strategy in situations with high futureuncertainty. This paper firstly uses Monte Carlo simulation to explore theperformance of proactive and reactive investment strategies using a rationalcost–benefit approach in a natural system with varying levels ofpersistence/interannual variability in annual maximum floods. It is foundthat, as persistence increases, there is a change in investment strategyoptimality from proactive to reactive. This could have implications forinvestment strategies under the increasingly variable climate that isexpected with global warming.As part of the emerging holistic approaches to flood risk management, thereis increasing emphasis on stakeholder participation in determining where andwhen flood protection investments are made, and so flood risk management isbecoming more people-centred. As a consequence, multiple actors are involvedin the decision-making process, and the social sciences are assuming anincreasingly important role in flood risk management. There is a need formodelling approaches which can couple the natural and human system elements.It is proposed that coupled human and natural system (CHANS) modelling couldplay an important role in understanding the motivations, actions andinfluence of citizens and institutions and how these impact on the effectivedelivery of flood protection investment. A framework for using agent-basedmodelling of human activities leading to flood investments is outlined, andsome of the challenges associated with implementation are discussed.
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