ABSTRACT
Flood risk management comprises structural and nonstructural measures and actions. Recently there has been a paradigm shift in flood governance from the traditional methods of flood defense, flood protection and flood management to the current modern approach, flood risk management. The modern approach focuses on the importance of controlling hazards and reducing people’s vulnerability to the effects of flooding. The need for effective management of flood risk, especially in developing countries, has been a major concern for experts, researchers and development partners, largely due to the fact that most developing countries lack fiscal and skill capacities to mitigate the effects of flooding in both urban and rural areas. The causes of flooding are attributable to both natural effects (climate change and sea level rise) and anthropogenic activities (blocked drains, encroachment on flood plains, etc.). In order to reduce the contribution of human activities to flooding, efforts are being directed to the use of spatial planning instruments for the control of land use, building developments, drainage, public infrastructures and other components of urban space to enable free flow of excess storm water. Spatial planning has been described as the art and science of ordering the use of land, siting of buildings and managing building character for the purpose of securing economic convenience, beauty or branding for people. It is a rational and systematic process of guiding public and private actions and influencing the future by identifying and analyzing alternatives and outcomes. It seeks to arrange the physical space and guide future activities according to sustainability and other accepted principles. Spatial planning tools that can be used to effectively curtail the dangerous effects of flooding include land use plans, zoning ordinances, subdivision regulation, development control, municipal spatial data infrastructure and others. Other tools that can be used to support preparedness for flooding include flood risk early warning systems, waste management master plans, drainage master plans and so on.
Spatial planning has become a major non-structural approach used worldwide to prevent the occurrence of flooding and mitigate its effects. According to Dawson et al., the nonstructural measures of flood risk management can be summarized into three: spatial planning, insurance and improvement of resistance to the effects of flooding.
The chapter presents spatial planning and other tools that can be used in flood preparedness in low-resource developing economies.
