Assessment and management of flood risks

2006/0005(COD)

This Commission staff working document concerns the progress in implementation of the Floods Directive.

To recall, Directive 2007/60/EC on the assessment and management of flood risks entered into force on 26 November 2007. This Directive required Member States to assess if all water courses and coast lines are at risk from flooding, to map the flood extent and assets and humans at risk in these areas and to take adequate and coordinated measures to reduce this flood risk.

This staff working document noted that there has been a multitude of approaches across Europe in assessing the risk of flooding and implementing the requirements of the Floods Directive.

The main conclusions of this report are:

Preliminary Flood Risk Assessment (PFRA): these assessments considered potential sources of flooding such as from rivers, lakes, coastal waters, groundwater and surface water flooding from heavy rainfall. The report noted that 18 Member States decided to undertake a PFRA across their entire territories and for all potential sources of flooding. Other Member States used transitional measures: Luxembourg and Latvia decided to use existing risk assessments to identify flood risk areas across their whole territories. Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Slovakia decided to use existing flood hazard and flood risk maps across their whole territories and did not undertake a Preliminary Flood Risk Assessment. Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom used a mixture of approaches across their territories. Around 8000 areas of potential significant flood risk have been identified by 23 Member States with Croatia identifying the most (2976).

Sources of flooding: flooding from rivers was the most common source associated with flood risk areas and the economy was the most common aspect to be potentially impacted in these areas.

Flood hazard and flood risk maps have been prepared by most Member States with the potential flooding from rivers being most often mapped.

Most Member States with a coastline have also mapped potential sea water flooding. In some Member States it seems that flooding from a number of sources has been combined in a single map.

Cooperation: Member States are required to cooperate and coordinate with other Member States sharing river basins that cross national borders. This appears to have been done in all Member States for the assessment of flood risk and in the preparation of flood maps in cross border river basins, with the River Commissions such as those for the Danube and Rhine playing key roles in coordination and information exchange.

Next step: Member States should use the maps to develop Flood Risk Management Plans by December 2015.