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Titel |
Modelling farm vulnerability to flooding: A step toward vulnerability mitigation policies appraisal |
VerfasserIn |
P. Brémond, G. Abrami, C. Blanc, F. Grelot |
Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2009
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Medientyp |
Artikel
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Sprache |
Englisch
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Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 11 (2009) |
Datensatznummer |
250028943
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Zusammenfassung |
Abstract Recent catastrophic flood events such as Elbe in 2002 or Rhône in 2003 have shown
limits of flood management policies relying on dykes protection: worsening of flood
impacts downstream, increased damage by dykes rupture. Those events, among
others, contributes to radical changes on the philosophy of flood prevention, with the
promotion of new orientations for mitigating flood exposition. Two new trends may
have a significant impact on rural areas: floodplain restoration and vulnerability
mitigation.
The Rhône River program, which is an contract of objectives signed between
French Government and local collectivites, is highly illustrative of these new trends
and their impact on agricultural sector. In this program, it appears that areas to be
concerned by floodplain restoration are agricultural ones, because their supposed
vulnerability to flood is expected to be less important to urban areas. As a consequence,
agricultural sector is particularly concerned by planned actions on mitigation of
assets vulnerability, an important part of the program (financial support of European
Union of 7.5 Million euros). Mitigation of agricultural assets vulnerability reveals
particularly interesting for two following reasons. Firstly, it is a way to maintain
agricultural activities in floodplains yet existing, without promoting flood protection.
Secondly, in case of floodplain restoration, vulnerability mitigation is a way for
local authorities to compensate over-flooding impacts. In practice, local authorities
may financially support farmers for implementing measures to mitigate their farm
vulnerability.
On the Rhône River, an important work has already been done to identify farm
vulnerability to flooding, and propose measures to mitigate it. More than 3Â 000 farms
exposed to flood risk have been identified representing 88Â 690 ha of agricultural areas which
is estimated to generate damage between 400 and 800 Million euros depending on the season
of occurrence for a catastrophic flood. In the case of farm activities, vulnerability mitigation
consists in implementing measures which can be: physical (equipment or electric
power system elevation), organizational (emergency or recovery plan) or financial
(insurance). These measures aim at decreasing the total damage incurred by farmers in
case of flooding. For instance, if equipment is elevated, it will not suffer direct
damage such as degradation. As a consequence, equipment will be available to
continue production or recovery tasks, thus, avoiding indirect damage such as delays,
indebtedness-¦
The effects of these policies on farms, in particular vulnerability mitigation cannot be
appraised using current methodologies mainly because they do not consider farm as a whole
and focus on direct damage at the land plot scale (loss of yield). Moreover, since
vulnerability mitigation policies are quite recent, few examples of implementation exist
and no feedback experience can be processed. Meanwhile, decision makers and
financial actors require more justification of the efficiency of public fund by economic
appraisal of the projects. On the Rhône River, decision makers asked for an economic
evaluation of the program of farm vulnerability mitigation they plan to implement. This
implies to identify the effects of the measures to mitigate farm vulnerability, and
to classify them by comparing their efficacy (avoided damage) and their cost of
implementation.
In this presentation, we propose and discuss a conceptual model of vulnerability at the
farm scale. The modelling, in Unified Modelling Language, enabled to represent the ties
between spatial, organizational and temporal dimensions, which are central to understanding
of farm vulnerability and resilience to flooding. Through this modelling, we encompass three
goals:
To improve the comprehension of farm vulnerability and create a framework
that allow discussion with experts of different disciplines as well as with local
farmers;
To identify data which are needed to implement the model and to collect them,
specifically using the focus group method;
Based on the conceptual model, to program a mathematical model which will be
used to simulate damage (direct and indirect) on farm due to flood.
This last objective should enable us to appraise policy to mitigate vulnerability which is
planned to be implemented on Rhône River at the individual and regional scale. Finally, we
discuss the possibility to use the UML modelling to develop a multi-agent system approach
which could be interesting to take into account ties between farmers (solidarity, loan of
equipment) or systemic effects due to the damage incurred by economic partners (loss of
market share).
Keywords vulnerability, UML modelling, farming systems, flood, mitigation policy,
economic valuation |
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