6 The need for big scale measures 133
6.5 Review of land and water management worldwide
6.5.5 The regulation of evaluated buildings and facilities
The social construction in the flood regulation
In Germany, after the 2002 flood, there were some example cases from the flood protection agency of Saxony-Anhalt. They illustrated how the society can manage the use of floodplains along a river when facing extreme floods. The relationship between the social arrangement and the elemental forces of floods are particularly focused. Moreover, the permitted buildings in floodplains have been mentioned in these projects by involving the Federal Water Act and Flood Control Act directly. Water management, Land use planning and local municipal planning agencies play major roles in approving building permissions in floodplains.
In particular, planning, law and property rights on a persistent social construction, will use the legal framing on the pattern of human activities in floodplain. These majority groups of the social construction are involved in terms of four stakeholders such as policy makers, land use planners, landowners and water management agencies. Those groups will mainly be involved in locating buildings and manage activities in flood plain areas (Figure 6.15).
Figure 6.20 Patterns of human activity (EC, 2007)
However, this project tries to develop the measures for patterns of human activity and the social construction of floodplain and for land policy issues on extreme floods. Substantially, it is providing information on better solutions by aiming at the implementing for local communities by connecting Large Areas for Temporary Emergency Retention (LATER) on planning, law and property rights for social construction.
The final consequence is, that the building code of Germany depends on the federal states which are involved in the Federal Water Act and the Flood Control Act. In case to build housings in the risk areas, the individual land owners locating in the floodplains will construct the housing which has to cope with the settings of their own houses in the flood risk locations.
The subjective right for protection against financial losses through floods cannot be derived from the law. And the suggestion will be adaptive measures for land owners and local municipality agencies concerning land use planners, policy makers on water management which will combine all of the interest in each stakeholder on implement the flood regulation.
According to Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) and The Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP) (AIT-UNEP RRCAP, 2011 p.7-17) it is reported that
safety of residents. The building regulation is mostly specifying especially the type of materials and techniques. These two options will be suitable to allow the usage in flood risk areas.
Thailand and other countries in Asia and around the Pacific are mostly have building codes.
Nevertheless, the system of enforcing the building codes differs from country to country.
Besides, it is further mentioned that Thailand has some types of rules on building codes, however, they are exceedingly separated over various ministries and lack of coherency, including, that the enforcement is still not strong enough. Interestingly, many countries in the South and South-East Asia were impacted by massive floods, leaving many homes destroyed and damaged. By the climate change issues, such flooding and the relived loss of life and properties is trending towards happening more frequently. Therefore, incorporating multi-hazard zones and/or special flood prone areas in building code is necessary for migration and adaptation measures and this will be a main challenge for human responses.
Challenges of regulation / building code enforcement
In general, in the regulation of buildings and facilities for flood prone areas the issue of the building code enforcement can be found. For example: German case of regulation on building and building code. According to §903 German Civil Code (Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch), it is allowed for land owners to have a free usage of their property as long as the rights of others are not affected. Restrictions for the use of land are determined by the law (Article 14 1 GG).
The German building code for the buildings in the flood plains does not restrict the rule for prohibiting buildings on the area which could be flooded. Nevertheless, the Federal Water Act (Wasserhaushaltsgesetz, WHG) implemented important laws and regulations on restrictions for buildings in flood prone areas. Furthermore, the Federal Flood Control Act will add more details for connecting with the Federal Water Act. Likewise, the law and regulation are mostly quite different in the individual and depend on the legal application in each of federal states (Länder). Within the harmonized procedures of the flood control Act 2005 of Germany, it is tried to figure out the regional flood planning to support the cooperation on River basins.
Moreover, based on the Water Act after 2005 – which is now reformed by the federal Water Act in 2010 – the federal states (Länder) launched adequate laws to regulate land use in floodplains by regarding to environmental respect with concerning on using the floodplain, restoring floodplains, high water discharge of damage and etc.
Therefore, when buildings have to be constructed in a flood-prone area in central region of Thailand, it is necessary that buildings should be elevated together with the land owners about expected flood levels for at least the design return period to reduce an opportunity of flooding and to limit the potential damage to buildings and it should be suitable with survivability when it is flooded.