A prevention versus cure dilemma: Protection from post-wildfire flood hazards combining experiences from Greece and Australia

Angelos Alamanos, Russell M. Wise, Stefanos Xenarios, George Papaioannou, Vassiliki Markogianni, George Varlas, Angelos Plataniotis, Anastasios Papadopoulos, Elias Dimitriou and Phoebe Koundouri ()

No 2532, DEOS Working Papers from Athens University of Economics and Business

Abstract: This paper contributes to addressing the escalating challenge of post-wildfire flood hazards - a growing threat to people and nature under climate change - by integrating advanced flood modelling within a governance framework to support proactive flood-protection planning. The coastal community of Kineta, in Greece, is used as a case study to demonstrate the combined application of the multi-disciplinary modelling approach and the governance assessment framework. The modelling approach analyses post-wildfire floods, and guides the design of post-wildfire erosion and flood protection treatments (PEFTs). It combines remote sensing analyses, atmospheric and hydraulic simulation models like WRF-ARW and HEC-RAS, and the geospatial application of targeted PEFTs, such as log-erosion barriers and wooden check dams. The need to bring such model-driven insights into policies implementing PEFTs, led us to augment the modelling approach with a governance framework followed in Australia, which has many similar hazard and governance characteristics to those of Greece. The governance framework is based on the values-rules-knowledge (VRK) model of decision-making contexts, and identifies key barriers that lead to insufficient flood protection. Robust insights are generated from this process about how to effectively apply integrated modelling approaches within decision-making contexts for knowledge and policy co-production to address institutional, behavioral and knowledge barriers impeding timely investments in flood risk mitigation. The proposed framework is suggested as a comprehensive science-to-policy approach that can support more proactive post-wildfire flood risk management.

Keywords: Post-wildfire floods; Flash-floods modelling; Protection works design; Values; Rules; Knowledge; Governance; Greece; Australia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-05-05
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