Safety chain approach in flood risk management

Historically, the Dutch have placed strong emphasis on prevention (building dikes) in their flood risk management policy. However, in current public debate it is questioned whether this historically grown flood risk policy is still the best protection policy for the country in the 21st century. In this paper, the so-called safety chain approach is used to address this question. The safety chain distinguishes between five links or phases of risk and crisis management: pro-action, prevention, preparation, response and recovery. This approach is used to evaluate flood risk management policy in several countries and to perform a cross-national comparison. The international comparison supports the hypothesis that the safety chain approach is a useful tool for policy evaluation and that valuable lessons can be drawn from different approaches in other countries. Furthermore, it is found that the Dutch flood defence strategy, focused on prevention, cannot be replaced by measures in other links of the chain. This strategy can, however, be broadened by more pro-active measures and additional efforts on preparation, response and recovery. By doing so, the consequences of possible flooding would be better taken into account and the policy focus would shift from managing the probability of flooding to managing flood risk (i.e. both the probability and consequences of flooding).