Decision-making Methods For Operational
Flood Management
Author(s)
K. A. Wojciechowska
Abstract
In 1995, because of danger of flooding, a massive evacuation in the province of
Gelderland in the Netherlands took place. The process of the evacuation went
well, however, the life-threatening flood did not occur. The decision was based
on deterministic information, experience and expertise. A robust technique,
where uncertainties (e.g. in water level forecast) are explicitly incorporated, was
not used (and is still not used). There are several methods in the decision theory,
which allow the inclusion of uncertainty in decision-making in an explicit way.
This paper gives a description of such methods in the context of operational
flood management. We focus on decision trees, decision influence diagrams and
Markov Decision Processes. In the context of operational flood management, the
methods usually require specification of conditional flooding probability, i.e. a
flooding probability given some (uncertain) information. We present application
of such methods to operational decisions like evacuation or activation of an
emergency storage area. We compare the methods with respect to ease of
understanding and we briefly discuss whether there is a chance to apply the
methods in real life situations.
Keywords: decision-making, decision trees, decision influence diagrams,
Markov Decision Processes, uncertainty, conditional flooding probability.
1 Introduction
The Netherlands is a country located in the delta of three European great rivers:
the Rhine, the Meuse and the Scheldt. Over 60% of the country is situated below
mean sea level or is vulnerable to flooding by sea or by rivers. Natural barriers
like dunes and high grounds, and man-made constructions like dikes and storm
surge barriers protect the area from flooding.
Keywords
decision-making, decision trees, decision influence diagrams,
Markov Decision Processes, uncertainty, conditional flooding probability
Related Book
Other papers in this volume
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