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Socio-hydrology has become an important platform for discussion and exchange in current water research. A key challenge is the integration of the social into socio-hydrological logic. To date, most...

This paper examines two leading questions of current German spatial-planning-research. The first question regards the significance of co-authorships in German-language spatial planning research, me...

Damages due to extreme hydro-metrological events request for additional efforts to enhance the implementation of property level flood risk adaptation (PLFRA) measures. Although a highly effective l...

This article aims to analyze the legal framework for flood risk management in Austria, focusing on planning. Austria’s legal basis for flood risk management is fairly complex because its federal or...

Floodplain areas across the world have always played an attractive role for residential and non-residential developments. The Alpine regions have a strong pressure to develop new residential and non-residential buildings in hazard areas due to lack of other areas suitable for development. Consequently, the number of elements at risk and vulnerability to flood hazards increased. In order to reduce the vulnerability, the focus of mitigation flood hazards was for decades on structural engineering measures with the problem of spatial misfits between the threat and management strategy. Since the late 1990s/early 2000s, Austrian policy makers have been trying to overcome this spatial misfit with the implementation of an inter-local co-operation approach with the use of so-called ‘new spatial planning’ (Heley, 2013) in the planning process. Therefore, the paper examines what the actors and stakeholders are doing in practice and how the concept of fuzziness helps. Although a partnership approach may be seen as a promising solution, in practice there are many limitations and barriers in establishing these collaborations and making them effective (especially in the long term). Rhetoric may not be matched by reality and a ‘partnership’ agenda may bring more problems (i.e. high transactions costs, high risk of failure, uncertainty in the long term) than it solves.

This article relates how catchment-wide partnership agreements have been used in approaching flood risk management in Austria. Upstream–downstream co-operations are clearly influenced by a number of factors, where the combination of these interdependences can create specific conditions that alter the opportunity for effective governance arrangements in a local scheme approach. We present the motivations and drivers of the creation of inter-local co-operations in flood risk management, focusing especially on the main barriers and challenges. Although a partnership approach may be seen as an ‘optimal’ solution for flood risk management, in practice there are many limitations and barriers to establishing these collaborations.

This paper presents the use of environmental benefits in the policy-making process in nine European countries. Growing competition for financial resources suggests that a precise understanding of the benefits provided by policies is needed. In particular, the environmental co-benefits that environmental policies offer must be more thoroughly investigated. Yet because there is often a focus on systems rather than individual species or specific environmental factors it becomes more difficult to characterise benefits. This paper shows that the role of environmental benefits to advise policy action differs across selected European countries. Environmental benefits are used at different stages of the policy cycle and for different purposes. In many cases they are not used to inform high level decision making but to stimulate public debate or to develop more targeted legislative proposals.