DAAD Alumni Seminar: Call for Applications | Resilient Flood Risk Management

Topic & Context

This DAAD Alumni Seminar focusses changes within existing flood risk management in context of the introduction of the term and concept of „resilience“. The ambition is to gather experts from different countries and contexts to advance their expertise in the field of flood risk towards a resilient flood risk management. Participants typically range from PhD candidates or Post-Docs up to experts working in research-interested organisations such as public administration, NGOs or even industry.

The following questions shall guide potential applicants by identifying the main seminar’s content ideas. At the same time these questions should be addressed in the applications; not necessarily all of them, but those best fitting to interest and expertise of the applicants. Replies should be formulated in a form ready for (optional) later publication; the length of your formulation is not limited by us and depends on your own goal to participate in this workshop. Kindly first read the following questions, and find more details below.

Guiding questions

  1. What is the relevance of the concept of resilience within flood risk management? Is there already evidence that in specific fields it does provide novel insights, concepts, methods or applications?
  2. How can resilience be applied in the area of flood risk assessments and/or governance?
  3. What are important gaps in the flood risk management approach of the countries you work in?
  4. Your background:
    a. Work relation with the topic of floods
    b. Interest of outcome (paper, project proposal, other)

Some background

While resilience is an on-going trend in many disciplines, in flood risk management the introduction of this concept is still on-going as well. Traditional flood hazard and risk assessments for instance, might wonder what real novelty could arise from resilience. More importantly; it is an encompassing concept, but how can it be specifically applied to flood risk management so it does not simply replicate what is already being done?

There is at least a technical and an organisational side in the wide field of flood risk management, where resilience could add new incentives; technical solutions considering not just a potential risk and maximum damage extent, but focusing with resilience more on the recovery speed, range and quality, while also fostering an integrative, holistic understanding that does not regard management as an option to start just when the crisis already looms. On the organisational side, these factors impact on the way of management thinking, governance responsibility, range of stakeholders to be actively involved, logistics, how quickly a flood defence system or relief aid can be organised, and so forth.

The seminar is organised and conducted by the TH Köln University of Applied Sciences and the Technische Universität Kaiserslautern. The Technische Universität Kaiserslautern team is working in the field of civil engineering with in-depth experience in flood risk management, technical flood protection as well as emergency management of extreme flood events and has conducted a similar workshop with international participants in 2018 (https://www.bauing.uni-kl.de/en/fww/aktuellfww0/, Jüpner et al., 20181). The TH Köln team is working in areas of integrative risk and crisis management, spatial flood risk assessment, vulnerability and resilience indicators, critical infrastructure and others related to this seminars and has organised DAAD alumni seminars on Climate Change and Post-Tsunami event evaluations (https://riskncrisis.wordpress.com/events/alumni-seminars/, Fekete et al. 20172, Norf et al., 20143). The organisers are also involved in expert groups and networks of the United Nations, the German Association for Water, Wastewater and Waste (DWA) (i.a. working group “Resilience in flood risk management”) and others. In cooperation with the seminar’s participants, they will use this workshop as an opportunity to expand the network and to report the seminar’s results to stakeholders involved in processes of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), DWA and others.

Seminar details & application procedure

The TH Köln University of Applied Sciences and the Technische Universität Kaiserslautern call for applications from suitable candidates for the 2019 DAAD Alumni Seminar. This event will offer the chance to exchange experience and expertise on specific topics in the field of resilient flood risk management, to merge their networks and to foster future collaboration in research and practice. It will bring together scientists and practitioners from many countries of the world, representing not only a variety of scientific disciplines but at the same time different national experiences and approaches towards flood disaster resilience.

The seminar will provide a unique opportunity for experts from around the globe, who conducted part of their studies in Germany, to foster and enhance international cooperation and exchange. It will be composed of online-workshops and an intense one-week program in Germany from 14-18 October 2019. The program will comprise lectures, various discussion formats, field trips and interactive project activities. The seminar is conducted in English.

Travel costs to/from the seminar as well as accommodation and meals during the program in Germany are covered.

As a direct and tangible result of this seminar, we envisage a publication comprising policy papers and research articles of the seminar’s participants. Therefore,
We ask each applicant to provide a CV and a written application comprising the following:

  • Main motivation (Up to 3 sentences)
  • Information about 3 months you have already spent in Germany (research and / or education, conferences etc.)
  • Country of current (last 6 months) residence up to application deadline.
  • Replies to our guiding questions (select those relevant; minimum length of this section: half page)

This information is used as single expert statements for our website report, or as abstracts, possibly extended later on to full papers, being published either in our own publication series “Integrative Risk and Security Research” or in another peer-reviewed journal.

In order for applicants to be eligible for participation, the following formal requirements must be met

Please submit applications (CV and written application) until 25 March 2019 to celia.norf@th-koeln.de
For further information, please visit https://riskncrisis.wordpress.com/

More information on the seminar you can find here: 2019 DAAD Alumni Seminar_Resilient Flood Risk Management_Call for Applications

Source: Press release Technology Arts Sciences TH Köln/Technische Universität Kaiserslautern, Feb. 2019