Project outcomes and beyond
Main outcome
Specific products:
- A Vision and Action Plan with specific spatial adaptation measures for the flood prone area of Ninove-Zuid is being developed (still in progress)
- Awareness-raising brochure ‘Water zonder overlast’, was produced and is continuously distributed (both for flood prone citizens and the wider community).
- The incorporation of flood risk / water issues into neighbourhood information networks could take place in the upcoming months. However, it is entirely dependent on the head of the police department’s willingness.
Process results:
- Public actors were engaged in a participatory process, such as the participation of the Flemish Waterways; this is seen as an additional outcome indicating a change in the public working methods.
Public actors
- The main accomplishment was to engage the public actors of Ninove into a participation process. This engagement was rather problematic and difficult. Time was needed to evolve the actors’ perception and passive stance into a more interestingly willing approach. A real collaboration was set in February 2019 with the new alderman of spatial planning and environment have officially stated his interest in collaborating in the project, the departments of mobility and public works as well as the sewer manager and the social housing company showing positive participations. The collaboration will lead at least the development of a Vision Plan for the whole flooding area of the centre of Ninove and at best to an action Plan with specific measures.
- An interesting achievement is the participation of the Flemish Waterways. This public actor, responsible of the navigable river management, was not well acquainted with participative procedures, presenting in the past a high reluctance and scepticism to follow this kind of process. The Flemish Waterways were involved in the participation process of Ninove.
Citizens
- 5 community resilience workshops were delivered. The workshops in the fire brigade office and the café ’De Belleman’ were very effective with a high presence and active participation of the inhabitants. One workshop, in Okegem, did not result an active participation and had essentially
- Awareness-raising brochure ‘Water zonder overlast’, was produced and is continuously distributed (both for flood prone citizens and the wider community).
- The preparedness manual is in progress, it is made by flood-prone citizens for newcomers to the area, in cooperation with the fire brigade.
- The incorporation of flood risk / water issues into neighbourhood information networks could take place in the upcoming months. However, it is entirely dependent on the head of the police department’s willingness.
Flood risk management strategies (FRMS)
The flood risk governance in Belgium is moderately diversified, but mainly focused on defence. The water and flood issues are responsibility of public actors (state dominant) with a tendency to centralisation (Buijs et al., 2018).
The most recent IPCC predictions have made it clear that a considerable increase in river discharge can be expected until 2100, due to more extreme rainfall events and more river runoff. The risk of flooding will also increase due to heat stress weakening dikes. This provides proof for a relevant risk of climate change in the area.
The Flemish Region has a complex multi-level governance setting (Mees et al., 2016). Nine organisations are responsible for the sewer system infrastructures of different areas. Moreover, four different governmental actors have responsibility over watercourses. The partition is organised in function of the scale of the watercourses: one category for the navigable watercourses and three categories for the non-navigable watercourses (AF, 2017).
Next to the water management, spatial planning is managed at the the regional, provincial and municipal level. Since the establishment of the Commissie Integraal Waterbeleid in 2003, whose purpose is to organise an integral strategy amongst different entities, the water assessment has been introduced. So, since then, every new building development needs to imply an assessment of its effect on the water system. The European Floods Directive from 2007 has confirmed water managers’ understanding that working solely on protection would not suffice, but that also other types of measures (prevention and preparedness) are necessary. This gave them a formal reason to shift to Multi-Layered Water Safety (MLWS) before the main focus was on protection, spatial planning played some role (e.g. through water assessment introduced in 2003), and disaster management organizations and structures – the emergency services, hospitals and fire department - have been in place. Since 2010 not many additional measures have been implemented to reduce flood risk, only some new jerseys have been placed along the river. No further action taken by the city Ninove or Denderleeuw. Nevertheless, 2010 as a trigger point, more information was collected. In 2013, a cost-efficiency analysis was done by the Flemish Environmental Insitute and the work on the Dender valley formally started in 2016. From 2016, the FRM plan for the Dender is being developed under the collaboration of the Flemish Waterways - the water manager - , the Departement Omgeving - the spatial planning department from the Flemish government and the Province of East Flanders, which also has spatial planning responsibilities. The FRM plan of the Dender focuses explicitly on the 3 Ps of the MLWS approach. The FRM plan for Dender is the first plan to use the MLS and the 3Ps approach in Belgium. FRM in Belgium is traditionally regarded exclusively as a governmental responsibility, only in the last 5 years they started to engage citizens and other private actors to take flood risk measures.
The next table shows the FRM strategies that were considered before, during and after FRAMES project.
Table 1 Flood risks management strategies in the pilot area/region considering the timeline of FRAMES
| Layers of MLS | Before FRAMES | During FRAMES | After FRAMES |
| 1.Protection/ defence | FRM plan for Dender in 2016 | No changes in hard infrastructure as result of FRAMES (interview pilot manager, 2019) | No changes in hard infrastructure as result of FRAMES (interview pilot manager, 2019) |
| 2. Pro-action/ prevention via spatial planning | Spatial planning- Water assessment in 2003 and Impact assessment of any new building to the the water system since the Directive Integraal Water Beleid
FRM plan for Dender started in 2016 |
1. Design proposals for making a specific neighbourhood in Ninove climate-proof / flood-proof
2. Floodlabel project for 20 houses |
1. Vision and action plan for Climate/flood proof neighbourhood in Ninove
2. Floodlabel project for 20 houses |
| 3. Preparation & response | Disaster management-learning from previous floods (2010)- FRM plan for Dender started in 2016 | 1.Risk communication and emergency planning. Preparedness manual for citizens, resilience community workshops in collaboration with local governments, workshops in schools, meeting neighbourhood networks | |
| 4. Recovery |