**2. Study area**

The area of focus of this chapter is the Netherlands, which is located in the western part of Europe. The country borders to the North Sea in the west. The general low altitude in the Netherlands and therefore potentially high risk of flooding has stimulated the development of an extensive network of dunes and dike-rings. Currently, the Netherlands consists of 57 dike-rings, varying from safety norms between 1/1250 in the river areas, up to 1/10000 along the coast (see section 3.2 for a further explanation about these safety norms).

The study area that is used to test the integrated flood risk model is 'Noord-Beveland', which is a municipality in the Dutch province of Zeeland. 'Noord-Beveland' is within dike ring '28' and has a safety norm of 1/4000 (TAW, 2000). Noord-Beveland is the smallest island of Zeeland and is connected with three dams and a bridge to the mainland. It is relatively safe for large-scale floods since most of its shore is located behind the Oosterschelde barrier, part of the 'Delta Works'. This barrier borders 'Noord-Beveland' in the northwestern part, whereby the northern and eastern shore of Noord-Beveland is secluded from the North Sea. The municipality has 7,408 inhabitants (CBS, 2011) and has a total area of 120 km² of which 34 km² is water. Noord-Beveland is mostly flat and is about one meter above sea level. A closer look to the land use in this area (Figure 1) reveals mainly agriculture uses, with some small villages, a few recreational areas and other rural activities. The most common agricultural land uses include: potato fields, wheat fields, pastures, corn fields, beet fields, orchards and other agriculture.

At the moment, more policy measures are taken to mitigate and prevent large-scale floods in the Netherlands, than to mitigate extreme rainfall events (Kok and Klopstra, 2009). Due to climate change, there is the expectation that not only the occurrence of extreme weather events will increase in the future (IPCC, 2007), but also a possible increase in large-scale floods (Milly et al., 2002; Te Linde et al., 2010). This can result, in combination with various socio-economic changes, in an increase in economic damage from floods (Bouwer et al., 2010; De Moel et al., 2011). Therefore, the risk of both extreme rainfall events and large-scale floods are both likely to increase. In order to prioritize it is interesting to have both types of

The objective of this research is to assess the flood risk, in terms of 'annual expected damage' (AED) of inundation due to extreme rainfall and large floods in a consistent way in order to compare the respective types of risk. Therefore, it is interesting to know to what extent flood risk from extreme rainfall events and large-scale flooding can be compared and how they relate to each other. To do this, the main objective of this research is to make an integrated

In section 2, the study area, 'Noord-Beveland', which will be used to test the model, will be briefly discussed and described. In section 3, we then discuss the different conditions that must be taken into account to be able to put the comparison of the different forms of flood risk in a proper perspective. In section 4, the methodology will be described that was used to make to integrated flood risk model. In section 5, the results will be described after using the data from the study area as input for the integrated flood risk model. In section 6, the results will be discussed to see whether or not the model matches our expectations. Finally,

The area of focus of this chapter is the Netherlands, which is located in the western part of Europe. The country borders to the North Sea in the west. The general low altitude in the Netherlands and therefore potentially high risk of flooding has stimulated the development of an extensive network of dunes and dike-rings. Currently, the Netherlands consists of 57 dike-rings, varying from safety norms between 1/1250 in the river areas, up to 1/10000

The study area that is used to test the integrated flood risk model is 'Noord-Beveland', which is a municipality in the Dutch province of Zeeland. 'Noord-Beveland' is within dike ring '28' and has a safety norm of 1/4000 (TAW, 2000). Noord-Beveland is the smallest island of Zeeland and is connected with three dams and a bridge to the mainland. It is relatively safe for large-scale floods since most of its shore is located behind the Oosterschelde barrier, part of the 'Delta Works'. This barrier borders 'Noord-Beveland' in the northwestern part, whereby the northern and eastern shore of Noord-Beveland is secluded from the North Sea. The municipality has 7,408 inhabitants (CBS, 2011) and has a total area of 120 km² of which 34 km² is water. Noord-Beveland is mostly flat and is about one meter above sea level. A closer look to the land use in this area (Figure 1) reveals mainly agriculture uses, with some small villages, a few recreational areas and other rural activities. The most common agricultural land uses include: potato fields, wheat fields, pastures, corn

along the coast (see section 3.2 for a further explanation about these safety norms).

model to compare the different types of flood risk in a plausible and consistent way.

flood risk calculated in the same way.

in section 7, conclusions will be drawn.

fields, beet fields, orchards and other agriculture.

**2. Study area** 

Fig. 1. Land use map of 'Noord-Beveland'. Based on the LGN4 and Land Use Scanner maps (see www.lgn.nl and Riedijk et al., 2007)
