The potential role of socio-hydrological models for participatory water governance in Burkina Faso

Halting and reversing water quality degradation is a major global concern. The variety of needs and priorities placed on water resources make the issue of water pollution multifaceted and complex. Addressing water quality management requires an approach that can tackle the diversity of requirements and concerns to achieve effective strategies. In Burkina Faso, stakeholder participation plays an important role in effective catchment management. The Participatory Water Governance Project in Rural Burkina Faso has developed support strategies to strengthen the capacity of local-level Water User Committees. Research conducted by TU Wien (Technical University Vienna) and International Water Management Institute (IWMI) aims to support the project by exploring the potential role of socio-hydrological models in water management decision making. The areas around the River Kou and Bapla Reservoir were the focus for this part of the study. The specific question addressed by TU Wien was: can a socio-hydrological model be developed that accurately captures the relationships between people and water quality in the study area

Intérêt des modèles socio-hydrologiques dans la gouvernance participative de l’eau au Burkina Faso

Pouvoir arrêter la dégradation de la qualité des ressources en eau, voire inverser la tendance, est une préoccupation mondiale majeure. Compte tenu de la diversité des besoins et des priorités en matière de ressources en eau, la question de la pollution de l’eau est devenue complexe et multidimensionnelle. La gestion de la qualité de l’eau exige la prise en compte de la diversité des exigences et des préoccupations pour mettre en œuvre des stratégies efficaces. Au Burkina Faso, la participation des différents acteurs, ou parties prenantes, est d’une importance capitale dans la gestion efficace des bassins versants. Le projet Planification participative pour une gestion plus inclusive et durable de l’eau en milieu rural au Burkina Faso (PP4MIS) a élaboré des stratégies d’appui pour renforcer les capacités des Comités Locaux de l’Eau (CLE) au niveau local. La recherche menée par l’Université Technique de Vienne (TU Wien) vise à soutenir ce projet en explorant le rôle que pourraient jouer les modèles socio-hydrologiques dans la prise de décision en matière de gestion des ressources en eau. Les zones autour de la rivière Kou et du barrage de Bapla ont fait l’objet de cette partie de l’étude. Elles correspondent aux espaces de gestion des CLE Kou et Bougouriba 7

A comparative analysis of the relationship between flood experience and private flood mitigation behaviour in the regions of England

There has been a move towards a more integrated approach to flood risk management, which includes a stronger focus on property level measures. However, in England the uptake of these measures remains low. Flood experience has been found to influence preparedness (i.e. the uptake of measures), but even experience does not always result in an increase in preparedness. We investigate the variations in the relationship between experience and preparedness for the regions of England as defined by the Environment Agency. Analysis of survey data collected by the Environment Agency among the at risk population between 1997 to 2004 was undertaken to determine the differences between the seven regions. We find that in the South West, Southern and Anglian regions increases in preparedness with increasing experience are higher compared to other regions. In the Thames, Midlands and North West regions the preparedness increases less with increasing experience. We explore the influence of other factors influencing flood mitigation behaviour that have been previously found in the literature and find that the differences between regions are correlated with the severity of experienced flooding and whether English is the first language of the respondents

Exploring drought‐to‐flood interactions and dynamics: A global case review

This study synthesizes the current understanding of the hydrological, impact, and adaptation processes underlying drought‐to‐flood events (i.e., consecutive drought and flood events), and how they interact. Based on an analysis of literature and a global assessment of historic cases, we show how drought can affect flood risk and assess under which circumstances drought‐to‐flood interactions can lead to increased or decreased risk. We make a distinction between hydrological, socio‐economic and adaptation processes. Hydrological processes include storage and runoff processes, which both seem to mostly play a role when the drought is a multiyear event and when the flood occurs during the drought. However, which process is dominant when and where, and how this is influenced by human intervention needs further research. Processes related to socio‐economic impacts have been studied less than hydrological processes, but in general, changes in vulnerability seem to play an important role in increasing or decreasing drought‐to‐flood impacts. Additionally, there is evidence of increased water quality problems due to drought‐to‐flood events, when compared to drought or flood events by themselves. Adaptation affects both hydrological (e.g., through groundwater extraction) or socio‐economic (e.g., influencing vulnerability) processes. There are many examples of adaptation, but there is limited evidence of when and where certain processes occur and why. Overall, research on drought‐to‐flood events is scarce. To increase our understanding of drought‐to‐flood events we need more comprehensive studies on the underlying hydrological, socio‐economic, and adaptation processes and their interactions, as well as the circumstances that lead to the dominance of certain processes. This article is categorized under: Science of Water > Hydrological Processes Science of Water > Water Extreme

An interdisciplinary research agenda to explore the unintended consequences of structural flood protection

One common approach to cope with floods is the implementation of structural flood protection measures, such as levees or flood-control reservoirs, which substantially reduce the probability of flooding at the time of implementation. Numerous scholars have problematized this approach. They have shown that increasing the levels of flood protection can attract more settlements and high-value assets in the areas protected by the new measures. Other studies have explored how structural measures can generate a sense of complacency, which can act to reduce preparedness. These paradoxical risk changes have been described as levee effect, safe development paradox or safety dilemma. In this commentary, we briefly review this phenomenon by critically analysing the intended benefits and unintended effects of structural flood protection, and then we propose an interdisciplinary research agenda to uncover these paradoxical dynamics of ris

The challenge of unprecedented floods and droughts in risk management

Risk management has reduced vulnerability to floods and droughts globally1,2, yet their impacts are still increasing3. An improved understanding of the causes of changing impacts is therefore needed, but has been hampered by a lack of empirical data4,5. On the basis of a global dataset of 45 pairs of events that occurred within the same area, we show that risk management generally reduces the impacts of floods and droughts but faces difficulties in reducing the impacts of unprecedented events of a magnitude not previously experienced. If the second event was much more hazardous than the first, its impact was almost always higher. This is because management was not designed to deal with such extreme events: for example, they exceeded the design levels of levees and reservoirs. In two success stories, the impact of the second, more hazardous, event was lower, as a result of improved risk management governance and high investment in integrated management. The observed difficulty of managing unprecedented events is alarming, given that more extreme hydrological events are projected owing to climate change3

Panta Rhei benchmark dataset: socio-hydrological data of paired events of floods and droughts

As the adverse impacts of hydrological extremes increase in many regions of the world, a better understanding of the drivers of changes in risk and impacts is essential for effective flood and drought risk management and climate adaptation. However, there is currently a lack of comprehensive, empirical data about the processes, interactions and feedbacks in complex human-water systems leading to flood and drought impacts. Here we present a benchmark dataset containing socio-hydrological data of paired events, i.e., two floods or two droughts that occurred in the same area. The 45 paired events occurred in 42 different study areas and cover a wide range of socio-economic and hydro-climatic conditions. The dataset is unique in covering both floods and droughts, in the number of cases assessed, and in the quantity of socio-hydrological data. The benchmark dataset comprises: 1) detailed review style reports about the events and key processes between the two events of a pair; 2) the key data table containing variables that assess the indicators which characterise management shortcomings, hazard, exposure, vulnerability and impacts of all events; 3) a table of the indicators-of-change that indicate the differences between the first and second event of a pair. The advantages of the dataset are that it enables comparative analyses across all the paired events based on the indicators-of-change and allows for detailed context- and location-specific assessments based on the extensive data and reports of the individual study areas. The dataset can be used by the scientific community for exploratory data analyses e.g. focused on causal links between risk management, changes in hazard, exposure and vulnerability and flood or drought impacts. The data can also be used for the development, calibration and validation of socio-hydrological models. The dataset is available to the public through the GFZ Data Services (Kreibich et al. 2023, link for review: https://dataservices.gfz-potsdam.de/panmetaworks/review/923c14519deb04f83815ce108b48dd2581d57b90ce069bec9c948361028b8c85/).</p

Twenty-three unsolved problems in hydrology (UPH) – a community perspective

This paper is the outcome of a community initiative to identify major unsolved scientific problems in hydrology motivated by a need for stronger harmonisation of research efforts. The procedure involved a public consultation through on-line media, followed by two workshops through which a large number of potential science questions were collated, prioritised, and synthesised. In spite of the diversity of the participants (230 scientists in total), the process revealed much about community priorities and the state of our science: a preference for continuity in research questions rather than radical departures or redirections from past and current work. Questions remain focussed on process-based understanding of hydrological variability and causality at all space and time scales. Increased attention to environmental change drives a new emphasis on understanding how change propagates across interfaces within the hydrological system and across disciplinary boundaries. In particular, the expansion of the human footprint raises a new set of questions related to human interactions with nature and water cycle feedbacks in the context of complex water management problems. We hope that this reflection and synthesis of the 23 unsolved problems in hydrology will help guide research efforts for some years to come

A dynamic framework for flood risk

Long-term feedbacks between humans and floods may lead to complex phenomena such as coping strategies, levee effects, call effects, adaptation effects, and poverty traps. Such phenomena cannot be represented by traditional flood risk approaches that are based on scenarios. Instead, dynamic models of the coupled human-flood interactions are needed. This paper reviews the phenomena, feedbacks and model types associated with this kind of models. The paper concludes that the models may play an important role in integrated flood risk management by exploring a wider range of possible futures, including unexpected phenomena, than is possible when using scenarios.Marie Sklodowska-CurieThe ERCThe FW