PhD Candidate: Spatial Planning and Flood Risk Management - Nijmegen, Nederland - Radboud University

Beschrijving

Flooding is a threatening human-/climate-induced hazard and the expected increase in the frequency and severity of floods is challenging cities worldwide. Existing scholarship on flood risk adaptation theorises about modes of governance and strives to identify the key governance features for enhancing urban flood resilience. Flood risk management has since long been informed by centralised control and rational problem-solving, resulting in the main strategy of keeping floods away from urban areas through hard control infrastructure. Yet, the emergence of a bioregional approach – which seeks to include communities in the governance of local resources,– the gradual decentralisation of power, the shift from government to governance, and the increasing occurrence of flooding events have triggered and encouraged a change in discourses concerning flood risk management. Modern flood risk management advocates a paradigm shift from a focus on flood defence (reducing the probability of floods) to approaches aimed at reducing both the probability and consequences of floods. Spatial planning can significantly reduce the consequences (vulnerability and exposure) of floods when profiling spatial distribution and land use in floodplains. Nonetheless, spatialisation of flood risk management strategies is hardly achieved in practice.

Driven by the safety-first principle, flood risk management emerges from a culture of resistance. The advocated paradigm shift does not happen in a vacuum; it rather demands technical innovations and, most importantly, changes to current existing institutional arrangements and the set of actors, rules and resources in flood risk management. Rules-in-use (institutions) are not the only incentive or constraint faced by actors involved in decision-making. Flood risk governance lands in highly politicised contexts and it is played out at the interface of institutional settings and power relations, whose interaction may constrain or enable stakeholders in developing or implementing new flood risk management strategies. To better understand the outcomes of decision-making processes in this context, you will be invited to combine discursive-institutional theories with theories on power to conduct a fine-grained analysis of flood risk management and spatial policies and unravel the complexity of implementing spatial strategies for flood risk management. A combination of theories on power and institutional theories allows to move beyond purely institution-centred or power-centred approaches and gain a more comprehensive understanding of the conditions affecting decision-making processes and outcomes.

By using a multiple-case design, this research aims to learn about 1) the behaviour of actors in multi-layered governance structures and nested institutional settings, 2) the discourses actors bring into action arenas and how these shape decision-making processes, and 3) the (transboundary) institutional arrangements for dealing with upstream-downstream conflicts. Empirical insights will be comparatively analysed to better understand current adaptation responses and ultimately help policy-makers design successful governance approaches for enhancing urban flood resilience.

You will be supervised by Dr Corinne Vitale and Prof. Sander Meijerink.

This position may include a 10% teaching component.