KAHR - Municipal consultation meeting on flood-adapted urban land-use planning in the StädteRegion Aachen
The floods in July 2021 have led to an extreme impact along many rivers in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate.
The BMBF-funded KAHR project accompanies the (re)construction process and makes a scientific contribution to flood risk management after the flood disaster in order to make affected regions more resilient. One of the components of KAHR is to determine and further develop the contribution of regional and urban land-use planning to risk-based and flood-adapted urban development.
Against this backdrop, the municipal consultation meeting on 23 May 2024 in the StädteRegion Aachen addressed the urgent need for flood-adapted urban land-use planning using practical examples from flood-prone municipalities. The aim of the event was to discuss possible solutions based on the research results of the KAHR project and to make recommendations.
At the beginning of the consultation meeting, Head of Department Susanne Lo Cicero-Marenberg welcomed the 35 participants and emphasised the importance of flood-adapted urban land-use planning in view of the rain events that occurred again in 2024. Prof Stefan Greiving from IRPUD at TU Dortmund University then presented the KAHR project as well as the legal framework and the principle of worthiness of protection of sensitive infrastructure as part of a risk-based planning approach.
Examples from the cities of Stolberg, Aachen and Baesweiler were used to illustrate how risk-based planning can be applied to both new and existing buildings. The approach of hazard zones, which takes into account the parameters of water depth and flow velocity, was discussed. The planning simulation in Erftstadt-Liblar on 25 January 2023 served as a model here.