Safety Regions and water management authorities to cooperate more intensively on flood disaster management
On 31 May, at a Safety Council meeting, DG RWS, Jan Hendrik Dronkers, and Delta Commissioner Wim Kuijken explained the “large-scale flood evacuation module”, and invited the Delta Programme and the Safety Regions to collaborate.
Safety Council meetings are held periodically with the chairs of the 25 Safety Regions. These regions are responsible for preparing for and responding to emergencies, advising the government and providing citizens with information about this. Cooperating with the Safety Regions is important to the Delta Programme due to the updating of the standards for flood defences which includes assumptions about the residents to be evacuated. It is desirable that these assumptions are administratively validated in terms of feasibility in the near future.
With the help of the water management authorities and using the “large-scale flood evacuation module” currently being developed by RWS, the Safety Regions can be supported in this with the most up-to-date information on flooding and available infrastructure. The module is being developed under the supervision of the Flood Management Steering Group. The DG RWS has invited the Safety Regions to participate in this project.
The Delta Commissioner and DG RWS are calling on the Safety Regions to work on providing a perspective for action for citizens in the event of flooding. The “large-scale flood evacuation module” can also play a role in this. The call was made following the consultation on 3 April with the Ministers of Security & Justice and Infrastructure & the Environment, the Delta Commissioner and the Safety Council’s multidisciplinary-cooperation portfolio holder.
The members of the Safety Council support this additional attention for floods, and have promised to cooperate in developing the module, validating the evacuation percentages and developing a perspective for action. Due to regional differences in threat levels, warning times and the characteristics of the flooding, the evacuation percentages will preferably be validated in a region-specific manner. The perspective for action will be tackled in such a way that it can also be used in other disaster situations. In addition, it will pay attention to self-help and vertical evacuation in the event of flooding, and will link up with the new possibilities offered by social media.
In these activities, use will be made of the relevant knowledge and practical experience available in the various Safety Regions regarding evacuations and the perspective for action. The Evacuations Module project group and the Delta Programme will flesh out, prioritise and coordinate follow-up actions, in collaboration with the secretariat of the Safety Council. Progress will be examined at the next Safety Council meeting in October 2013.