Fakultät 09 / Institut für Rettungsingenieurwesen und Gefahrenabwehr
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Pluvial floods claimed more than 180 lives in Germany in July 2021, when a large and slow-moving storm system affected Germany and many neighbouring countries. The death tolls and damages were the highest since 1962 in Germany, and soon after, the crisis management was under public critique. This study has undertaken an online survey to understand crisis management better and identify lessons to learn. It has received a positive interest among operational relief forces and other helpers (n = 2264). The findings reveal an overall satisfaction with the operation in general as well as personal lessons learned. It also reveals shortcomings in many areas, ranging from information distribution, coordination, parallel ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, infrastructure resilience, and other factors. Just as well, areas for improvement of the crisis management system are suggested by the respondents. Cooperation and support by the affected population are perceived as positive. This helps to inform other areas of research that are necessary, such as studies on the perception by the affected people. The gaps in assessments of operational forces and some methodological constraints are discussed to advance future follow-up studies.
Floods are a known natural hazard in Germany, but the amount of precipitation and ensuing high death toll and damages after the events especially from 14 to 15 July 2021 came as a surprise. Almost immediately questions about failure in the early warning chains and the effectiveness of the German response emerged, also internationally. This article presents lessons to learn and argues against a blame culture. The findings are based on comparisons with findings from previous research projects carried out in the Rhein-Erft Kreis and the city of Cologne, as well as on discussions with operational relief forces after the 2021 events. The main disaster aspects of the 2021 flood are related to issuing and understanding warnings, a lack of information and data exchange, unfolding upon a situation of an ongoing pandemic and aggravated further by critical infrastructure failure. Increasing frequencies of flash floods and other extremes due to climate change are just one side of the transformation and challenge, Germany and neighbouring countries are facing. The vulnerability paradox also heavily contributes to it; German society became increasingly vulnerable to failure due to an increased dependency on its infrastructure and emergency system, and the ensuing expectations of the public for a perfect system.
Emergency management services, such as firefighting, rescue teams and ambulances,are all heavily reliant on road networks. However, even for highly industrialised countries such asGermany, and even for large cities, spatial planning tools are lacking for road network interruptionsof emergency services. Moreover, dependencies of emergency management expand not only onroads but on many other systemic interrelations, such as blockages of bridges. The first challenge thispaper addresses is the development of a novel assessment that captures systemic interrelations ofcritical services and their dependencies explicitly designed to the needs of the emergency services.This aligns with a second challenge: capturing system nodes and areas around road networksand their geographical interrelation. System nodes, road links and city areas are integrated into aspatial grid of tessellated hexagons (also referred to as tiles) with geographical information systems.The hexagonal grid is designed to provide a simple map visualisation for emergency planners andfire brigades. Travel time planning is then optimised for accessing city areas in need by weighingimpaired areas of past events based on operational incidents. The model is developed and testedwith official incident data for the city of Cologne, Germany, and will help emergency managers tobetter device planning of resources based on this novel identification method of critical areas.