This thesis is focused on the floods that hit the Czech Republic in 1997 and 2002 and on the storms. It deals with the risk of floods and storms, flood control, insurance products, role of insurance companies in coverage of flood and storm risk. It considers the changes that have occured in the czech insurance market after the floods and storms.

This thesis deals with flood maps and their use in the context of property insurance. There are flood maps presented in comparison with similar projects of the European Union, the flood hazard maps and flood risk maps. There is also assessed the impact of flood maps on Flood Prevention Strategy in the Czech Republic. This thesis analyzes the offers insurance companies in the property insurance according to 4 risk flood zones. Finally, it evaluates the importance of flood maps not only from the perspective of insurance companies, but also from the perspective of others (people, companies etc.).

Urban populations worldwide are expanding rapidly and consequently a large number of people are becoming exposed to hazards inherent in cites. Phenomena such as the urban heat island can exacerbate the effects of heatwaves, and land surface sealing can lead to flash flooding. Cities are also the sites of enhanced air and water pollution from non-point sources such as concentrated motor vehicle use. Climate change predictions for the UK include increased winter precipitation and an increase in frequency of summer heatwaves. This will put further pressure on urban residents and infrastructure. Roof greening can be used within climate change adaptation schemes because green roofs have a range of environmental benefits which can help urban infrastructure become more sustainable. This thesis empirically quantifies several of these benefits, and the processes influencing them, by monitoring real green roofs in Manchester. A number of novel discoveries were made. Green roofs act as passive filters of airborne particulate matter. 0.21 tonnes of PM10 (2.3% of the inputs) could be removed from Manchester city centre in a maximum extensive green roof scenario. Species and site differences in particle capture were exhibited and related to morphology and proximity to sources respectively. An intensive green roof was able to lower the monthly median overlying air temperature at 300 mm by up to 1.06 oC. A combination of drought and mismanagement caused damage to the vegetation on one of the green roofs, with a subsequent reduction in the cooling effect. Daytime air temperatures were higher than over an adjacent bare roof for a larger proportion of the day than over the undamaged roof, and lower cooling was observed at night. A site-specific methodology was devised to monitor the rainwater runoff from an intensive green roof and an adjacent bare roof. Average runoff retention of 65.7% was observed on the green roof, compared to 33.6% on the bare roof. Season and rainfall amount had significant impacts on retention, however, many other explanatory variables such as Antecedent Dry Weather Period (ADWP) and peak rainfall intensity had no demonstrable, significant impact. Intensive roof construction on 10% of the rooftops in Manchester city centre would increase annual rainfall retention by 2.3%. The runoff was characterised with regards to heavy metals and nutrients. Nutrient levels were found to be not a significant problem for water quality, however, Environmental Quality Standards (EQS) values for protection of freshwater were exceeded for concentrations of Cu, Pb and Zn. High metal concentrations within the sediments may be acting as sources of pollution, particularly in the case of Pb. The age of the green roof means that past atmospheric deposition of Pb could be contributing to the runoff quality. The multi-benefit aspect of green roofs is discussed in the light of the results of this thesis and recommendations made for policy makers and the green roof construction industry.

O número e a intensidade dos desastres naturais têm aumentado em todo o mundo devido às mudanças climáticas. Atualmente, as inundações representam a maior parte dos desastres naturais e causam mais danos, mortes e impactos econômicos do que qualquer outro tipo de fenômeno natural. No Brasil, as inundações se intensificam principalmente no período de chuvas, entre os meses de Dezembro e Março, ocasionando dezenas de mortes, além de impactos econômicos, sociais e ambientais. Assim, prevenir esse tipo de desastre tem se tornado um fator importante para minimizar os impactos por ele provocados. Para isso, são necessárias informações atualizadas, completas e precisas sobre o atual estado das variáveis ambientais. Nesse contexto, as informações voluntárias estão sendo utilizadas como fonte de dados complementar para a gestão de risco de inundação, devido ao número elevado de voluntários que atuam como \"sensores\". Contudo, outras informações relacionadas a inundação estão dispersas em diferentes fontes de dados, dificultando as ações de resposta das agências de emergência. Neste trabalho e proposta uma abordagem que visa apoiar a gestão de risco de inundação, fornecendo mecanismos para a obtenção de informações voluntárias para esse contexto e permitindo a disponibilização dessas por meio de serviços geoespaciais em tempo real. Para tanto, mecanismos de interpretação foram definidos para apoiar os voluntários durante a análise e medição da altura da água, sendo essas informações fornecidas por meio de uma plataforma de crowdsourcing. Além disso, um framework foi desenvolvido a fim de disponibilizar as informações voluntárias de forma interoperável por meio de serviços geoespaciais. Ao final, foram realizados estudos experimentais para avaliar a eficácia dos mecanismos desenvolvidos para a obtenção de informações voluntárias para gestão de risco de inundação / The number and intensity of natural disasters have increased worldwide due to climate change. Currently, floods represent most natural disasters and cause more damage, deaths and economic impacts than any other natural phenomenon. In Brazil, the floods are intensified especially during the rainy season, between the months of December and March, causing dozens of deaths, as well as economic, social and environmental impacts. Thus, preventing this kind of disaster has become an important factor to minimize the impacts caused by it. For this, it\'s necessary up-to-date, complete and accurate information about the current state of the environmental variable. In this context, volunteer information is being used as a complementary data source for flood risk management, due to the high number of volunteers who act as \"sensors\". However, other information related to flooding are scattered in different data sources, hindering response actions of emergency agencies. This dissertation proposes an approach to support flood risk management, providing mechanisms for obtaining volunteer information for this context and allowing the availability of these by means of geospatial services in real time. For this, interpretation mechanisms were defined to support the volunteers during the analysis and measurement of the water height, being this information provided by means of crowdsourcing platform. Additionally, a framework was developed to provide volunteer information in an interoperable way through geospatial services. Finally, experimental studies were conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the mechanisms developed to obtaining volunteer information for flood risk management

Ao longo do século XXI, a cultura de solidariedade dentro de uma bacia hidrográfica é baseada em aspectos legais. No caso brasileiro, isto é legitimado pela Constituição Federal de 1988, artigo 225, caput, \"Todos têm direito ao meio ambiente ecologicamente equilibrado, bem de uso comum do povo e essencial à sadia qualidade de vida, impondo-se ao Poder Público e à coletividade o dever de defendê-lo e preservá-lo para as presentes e futuras gerações\", e no artigo 3º que trata dos objetivos fundamentais da República Federativa do Brasil, entre eles, o inciso I que diz \"construir uma sociedade livre, justa e solidária\". Ainda neste contexto, o Código Civil Brasileiro, no artigo 265 menciona \"...a solidariedade não se presume; isto é, resulta da lei ou a vontade das partes...\". Também, visando uma gestão compartilhada, a Lei Federal 9.433/1997 cita no artigo 1º \"... a bacia hidrográfica é uma unidade territorial para políticas recursos hídricos... (V)\", e \"... a gestão dos recursos hídricos deve ser descentralizada e contar com a participação do Poder Público, dos usuários e das comunidades \"(VI). Desta forma, emerge o princípio de hidrossolidariedade destes contextos pré-mencionados nos cenários de discussão nacional e internacional. Esta pesquisa avaliou as limitações e os alcances do conceito de hidrossolidariedade, por meio da participação da comunidade nos problemas de drenagem urbana, com foco na gestão de risco de inundações. Embora a hidrossolidariedade seja um conceito pouco conhecido no Brasil, esta pesquisa estudou a viabilidade deste conceito com os atores sociais interessados em diferentes escalas espaciais da drenagem urbana: tanto na escala de lote domiciliar como na escala da bacia hidrográfica. A metodologia avaliou incentivos para os usuários da comunidade que aceitaram as ferramentas de hidrossolidariedade frente a problemas ambientais na gestão de inundações urbanas. Essas atitudes buscaram estimular a solidariedade e a responsabilidade cidadã na dimensão espaço-temporal. Em uma bacia estudada, os usuários participaram da criação de uma associação legalmente constituída por meio da metodologia explicada nesta pesquisa: \"Associação Amigos da Bacia do Tijuco Preto.\" Utilizou-se como ferramenta confirmatória entrevistas pessoais com usuários de duas bacias hidrográficas, Tijuco Preto e Gregório; analisaram-se dúvidas e realimentações de informações para propor e planejar a tomada de decisões no gerenciamento de recursos hídricos. Esta gestão foi caracterizada como participativa, compartilhada, integrada e continuada. Resultados da pesquisa apontaram que as partes possuem interesse e disponibilidade para desenvolver e compartilhar seu conhecimento sobre gestão de risco de inundação, bem como o espírito participativo e de solidariedade, para aplicação em sua comunidade com a finalidade de melhoria ambiental e bem estar do ser humano. / Throughout the XXI century, a culture of solidarity within a river basin is based on legal aspects. In Brazil, it is legitimated by the Federal Constitution of 1988, article 225, caput, \"Everybody is entitled to a ecologically-balanced environment, as well of common using by the people and essential to a healthy life quality, being imposed to the Public Power and the collective society the duty to defend it and to preserve it for the presents and future generations\". In the article 3 states about the fundamental objectives of the Federal Republic of Brazil, where in the item I says \"to build a free, just and solidarity society.\" Still in this context, the Brazilian Civil Code, in the article 265 mentions \"... the solidarity it is not presumed by itself; it is the result by law or by the willingness of the parties....\" Also, seeking a shared management, the Federal Law 9.433/1997 mention in the article 1 \"... the river basin is a territorial unit for water policies... (V)\", and \"... water resources should be decentralized and to count with the participation of the Public Power, of the users and of the communities\" (VI). Thus, the \"hydrosolidarity\" emerged from those fore-mentioned contexts at national and international arena. This research assessed the strengths and weaknesses of the concept of hydrosolidarity, thereby analyzing an application to urban drainage with community participation. Although hydrosolidarity is a concept not well known in Brazil, this research studied the feasibility of this concept with stakeholder and at different scales, either at the domiciliary lot or at the whole river basin scale. The methodology evaluated incentives for the community\'s users that accepted the tools of hydrosolidarity front to environmental problems in the management of urban floods. Those attitudes promoted stimuli toward citizenship solidarity and responsibility at spatiotemporal dimensions. Urban river basin users participated through the statements of the bylaws of a river basin association officially constituted through this research: the \"Association Friends of Tijuco Preto River Basin\". Through personal interviews to uses from two urban river basins, Tijuco Preto and Gregório, some doubts and feedbacks were surveyed in order to propose planning and decisionmaking on water management featured as participative, integrated and continuous. Results of the research depicted that social stakeholders had interests and willingness to develop and share their knowledge on flood risk management as well their participative solidarity to be applied into the community looking forward to achieving a higher environment and human well-being.

This thesis focuses on exploring the concept of managed realignment as a potential climate change adaptation strategy in Sweden. The empirics is based on the qualitative case study research within three Swedish municipalities of Trelleborg, Halmstad and Karlstad. The concept of territorial governance was used as the analysis framework for the empirical data. The aim of this thesis is to contribute to further research on managed realignment in Sweden, point out on current constraints and potentials of managed realignment within Swedish context and the current needs for making it a potential climate adaptation strategy in Sweden.

Natural disasters disrupt our daily life and cause many sufferings. Among the various natural disasters, flood is one of the most catastrophic. Assessing flood risk helps to take necessary precautions and can save human lives. The assessment of risk involves various factors which can not be measured with hundred percent certainty. Therefore, the present methods of flood risk assessment can not assess the risk of flooding accurately.  This research rigorously investigates various types of uncertainties associated with the flood risk factors. In addition, a comprehensive study of the present flood risk assessment approaches has been conducted. Belief Rule Base expert systems are widely used to handle various of types of uncertainties. Therefore, this research considers BRBES’s approach to develop an expert system to assess the risk of flooding. In addition, to facilitate the learning procedures of BRBES, an optimal learning algorithm has been proposed. The developed BRBES has been applied taking real world case study area, located at Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. The training data has been collected from the case study area to obtain the trained BRB and to develop the optimal learning model. The BRBES can generate different "What-If" scenarios which enables the analysis of flood risk of an area from various perspectives which makes the system robust and sustainable. This system is said to be intelligent as it has knowledge base, inference engine as well as the learning capability.

Le tiers de la population mondiale, vit dans des espaces où les risques potentiels sont liés plus ou moins directement à la nature ; Les inondations, sont responsables de plus de la moitié des risques dommageables. À l’instar le risque inondation affecte les villes marocaines et plus particulièrement celles situées sur les piedmonts dir. Les agglomérations de dir de Béni Mellal sont très menacée par les inondations. Ces catastrophes sont le fait de crues-éclair (flash flood) trouvant leur origine dans la structure des précipitations (intensités remarquables) et une topographie propice à la concentration des écoulements sur de petits bassins versants de forte pente.Ce travail est une contribution opérationnelle à la connaissance du phénomène « crue-éclair » affectant les agglomérations du "dir" de Béni-Mellal dont l’objectif est l’amélioration de la résilience du "dir" de l’Atlas de Béni-Mellal face aux inondations et aux "crues-éclair". À cause de l’absence des stations hydro pluviométriques, est vue la spécificité de dire comme une zone de transition, la démarche élaborée repose sur une étude fine des deux facteurs du risque, l’aléa et la vulnérabilité, sur des bassins versants représentatifs du domaine du dir de Béni Mellal. Notre approche, que l’on peut qualifier "hydrologique intégrée" considère l’aléa comme une solidarité hydrologique entre l’amont et l’aval ou plutôt la dépendance de l’aval vis-à-vis de l’amont. La gestion des risques dans le dir de Béni-Mellal, demande donc l’intégration des techniques hydrologiques modélisatrices et l’association des mesures non structurelles telles que, la conscience du risque, la réduction de la vulnérabilité, la maîtrise de l’occupation du sol, surtout la dynamique urbaine. Les solutions adoptées doivent être cohérentes entre elles. A cet égard, notre méthodologie s’articule sur la valorisation de données multi-sources. Elle s’appuie, d’un côté, sur une approche de l’hydrologie classique, qui consiste en l’étude analytique de « l’aléa historique » et l’étude hydrométrique dont les données hydrométriques et pluviométriques produites, seront utilisées pour la caractérisation de « l’aléa » et des crues torrentielles. Une approche hydrologique modélisatrice où les résultats seront utilisés pour la calibration et la validation d’une modélisation hydraulique et pour la production des cartes de risques. D’un autre côté, elle vise à intégrer le contexte socio-économique et cultuel, le degré d’organisation de l’occupation du sol, et les politiques publiques de la gestion des risques…etc. / One-third of the world's population lives in areas where potential risks are more or less directly related to nature. Floods are responsible for more than half of the damaging risks. Like other countries, the flood risk affects the Moroccan cities and especially those located on the piedmonts. For instance, the agglomerations of Béni Mellal piedmonts are very threatened by floods. These disasters are the result of flash floods originating principally from a changing rainfall pattern (remarkable intensities) and a favorable topography conductive to the concentration of the flows on small watersheds of steep slope.This study is an operational contribution to the knowledge of the "flood-lightning" phenomenon that is affecting the agglomerations of the "piedmont " of Beni-Mellal. Its objective is to identify the resilience of the Atlas “piedmont” of Beni-Mellal in the face of floods and "flash floods".Because of the absence of hydro-rainfall stations, and the specificity of the study area considered as being a transition zone, the approach developed is based on a detailed study taking into account two risk factors, namely the hazard and the vulnerability..Our approach, which can be described as "an integrated hydrological approach" considers the hazard as a hydrological solidarity between upstream and downstream or rather the dependence of downstream towards the upstream. Therefore, risk management in the piedmonts of Béni-Mellalrequires the integration of modeling hydrological techniques and the association of non-structural measures such as, risk awareness, vulnerability reduction, controlof soil occupation, especially urban dynamics. For this reason, the adopted solutions a must be coherent with each other. In this respect, our methodology is based on the valuation of multi-source data. It relie, on one hand, on a classical hydrology approach, which consists of the analytical study of "historical hazard"and the hydrometric study whose hydrometric and rainfall data will be used for the analysis. Characterization of "hazard" and flashfloods events (The results of this modeling hydrological approach will be used for the calibration and validation of hydraulic modeling and for the elaboration of risk maps. On the other hand, it aims at integrating the socio-economic and cultural context, the degree of organization of the occupation of the ground, and the public policies of the risk management ... etc.

The 2015 flood event in the Shire River basin was characterised by Malawi Government’s Department of Disaster Management (DoDMA) as the worst on record. It led to the damage in property worth millions of dollars with recovery still ongoing 3 years later. Over 150 fatalities were confirmed at the time with hundreds of others missing. The extent of the damage of the disaster was perhaps underlined by the swift adoption of the disaster management policy which was still in draft format then and the adoption of the climate change management policy a year later. In the aftermath of the disaster, as with most extreme weather events elsewhere around the world, questions were asked as to whether climate change might have had a hand in the occurrence of such an event and whether, going into a warmer climate, events of that nature of extremity will be the new normal. By using the risk-based event attribution methodology based on dedicated attribution experiments with a global climate model, and focusing on one of the sub-catchments of the Shire River basin, this study explored whether climate change from anthropogenic sources might have influenced the likelihood of such an event occurring. However, given the nature of hydrological events and the land use history of the basin, land use and cover change is another potential flood risk factor which, if overlooked, might affect conclusions with regards to the contribution of external factors to the risk of flooding. To account for both climate change and land use and land change, four sets of rainfallrunoff simulations were run using the Hydrologiska Byrans Vattenbalans-avdelning (HBV) hydrological model which has the ability to simulate the impact of land use and climate change on rainfall-runoff relationships. Each set was a combination of a climate scenario-either “factual” or “counter-factual”- and land use and cover change scenario-either factual (historical) or counterfactual (current). The climate scenarios were based on simulated rainfall and temperature from the HadAM3p model run in two modes-the “factual” and “counter-factual”- simulating the climate with atmospheric conditions closely resembling the atmosphere at the time of occurrence of the event and the climate as it would have been without human emissions of greenhouse gases. The proportion of the risk was calculated to determine how the risk of experiencing a flood of the January-April 2015 magnitude (for 1-day, 10- day, and 30-day maximum flows) changes with climate change only, land use and cover change only, as well as both climate change and land use and cover change. The results demonstrated that the probability of exceeding the 1-day maximum flow of the 2015 magnitude was lower in the factual (current) climate than in the counter-factual. However, changes in land use modify the flood risk such that, when land use change was accounted for, the extent of the reduction in the risk was lower. On the other hand, exceedance probabilities for 10-day and 30-day maximum flows were higher in the factual (current) climate. This was further heightened by changes in land use and cover. The study also established that observational uncertainties typical of the region may influence event attribution results to some extent. The results, which are based on a single attribution method and a single global climate model, do not span the method-model uncertainty range. As a consequence, the results are limited and do not constitute a fully defensible attribution statement.

The idea of evolutionary resilience in complex systems has gained attention in the recent years. This approach provides better insights in the context of emergence and adaptive capacity, that characterises complex adaptive systems (CAS) such as social-ecological systems (SES), than traditional reductionist and engineering resilience approaches. Departing from this premise, a set of methodologies that are funded in these principles have been developed, with promising perspectives for the analysis of these systems. In this thesis, one of these methodologies, the panarchy, is applied into La Marjaleria case study, in Castelló (Spain), in order to explore its capacity to offer new useful insights for the management of the area throught he scope of resilience. Looking for a systematic methodological approach, the focal SES and their scales are initially defined, followed by an adaptive cycle approach, performed for each of the scales, and finally a panarchy approach that is applied through focusing on the interactions between the adaptive cycles at the different scales. The results are also presented through a new graphic approach that accounts for the representation of the adaptive cycles at the different scales and their interactions in a dynamic manner that includes the time variable, and that can therefore facilitate its understanding. From the analysis performed, the system is found to be stuck in a rigidity trap because of the lack of transformative visions from both scales above (municipality) and below (households). Furthermore, the influence of cascade effects from both the upper and lower scale in the manner through which the focal scale navigated the adaptive cycle has become evident. The panarchy has also helped to discover some existing mismatches and archetypes affecting the system. After all, a general resilience assessment has helped to find out that the system presents a low resilience, and therefore an inherent risk of collapse in the event of external shocks that can make thresholds to be crossed. A further analysis, focused on the specific resilience, has been performed for the risk of flooding. The results show that the engineering resilience approach through which this risk has been traditionally managed could have helped to underestimate flood hazard and therefore contributed to an irresponsible occupation of the floodable area. New approaches towards resilience risk management could help to address the problematics caused by floods and also open new opportunities for long-term sustainability of the system. The panarchy approach can offer useful insights for the assessment of SES from the scope of complexity and multi-scale interactions, providing an approach consistent with the evolutionary resilience characteristic of CAS. However, there still exist some gaps, both in its perception by practitioners and in the availability of solid grounds towards the standardization of its application, implying that there is still room for further improvement in this methodological approach.