Cascading Events, Technology and the Floods Directive: future challenges

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To sum up, we can argue that the Floods Directive should include a higher balance between the evaluation of hazards and the management of vulnerability scenarios, with the aim to provide better advice to water managers in addressing the coordination challenges that could arise in the case of cross-scale crisis where cascades are diffused. Future flood risk management plans could integrate the impact of flooding events at larger spatial and temporal scales, considering all the possible cross-time and cross-scale challenges that can arise from flooding events. A better integration of common standards used for vulnerability assessment process in the Floods Directive implementation seems necessary, in particular on the basis of some priorities: i) use of maps and rankings that include CI interdependencies; ii) consideration of stressors that could amplify the impact of the events, including social and environmental vulnerabilities; iii) attention on economic drivers and environmental features that could generate cross-scale escalation.

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