Flood damage assessment and uncertainity analysis: the case study of 2006 flood in Ilisua Basin in Romania

Flood damage assessments supply crucial information to support authorities, local entities, and the stakeholders involved in decision-making regarding flood risk management in their compliance with the Floods Directive (2007/60/EC). Specifically, the estimation of economic flood damage provides objective results and rational procedure in so that relate legislative planning instruments in flood risk management can be understood, accepted and shared among stakeholders. However, flood damages assessment is specifically tailored to characteristics of the flooding and objects in the considered country. Moreover, the necessary information for this analysis are not always available for all European Countries, in particular regarding the damage functions which assumptions have large effects on flood damages estimation; therefore, the existence of uncertainties that may affect the final choice needs to be considered as in any decision process. In this paper, we have made an attempt to use different damage functions, collected and harmonized by the European Joint Research Centre (JRC), utilized in several European countries, for the flood losses assessment in Romania where these functions are not available. Moreover, we have compared the assessed damage obtained through the use of the JRC damages functions and real, surveyed damage in a case study in North-Western Romania, (i.e. Ilișua Basin), regarding the flood that occurred in June 2006, and analyze uncertainties. The performed analysis has demonstrated that the outcomes are influenced by the selection and testing of vulnerability curves. Our results show that overall applicability and transferability of depth-damage curves to other geographical regions is still a major gap in current flood damage modeling, but the quantification of the uncertainties and its communication to stakeholders are the first step for the maximization of effectiveness of quantitative approach, towards flood risk management objectives of the Flood Directive, ensuring that risk information is robust, credible and transparent.