Monitoring flood risk evolution: A systematic review of flood risk evolution assessments

Flood risk is changing over time. Climate change, land-use change, human interventions and socio-economic developments have an influence on the evolution of flood risk. Thus, the future dynamics of drivers influencing hazard, exposure and vulnerability and consequently flood risk evolution is uncertain. Therefore, flood risk management is confronted with deep uncertainties and need to continuously adapt to future circumstances. New management strategies are required to ensure the safety level of humans and their assets and reduce losses from floods. Adaptive flood risk management is a way to cope with such uncertainties. However, the implementation of adaptive flood risk management requires a flood risk monitoring system that screens critical developments of hazard, exposure, or vulnerability and warns the user when a critical point in flood risk evolution is approached. In order to develop a conceptual framework for a flood risk monitoring system, we conducted a systematic review of flood risk evolution assessments. We analysed how flood risk is conceptualised, which factors are assessed to analyse evolutions in one or more risk component, which methods are used to assess flood risk evolution and which risk outcomes are identified. We discuss the main concepts of monitoring the spatiotemporal changes of the components of risks and how the changes of these components contribute to the evolution of risk. We furthermore discuss the data sources, issues of spatial and temporal scales, and how the components of risk coevolve.