LAUSR

Abstract. Flood adaptation measures implemented at household-level play an important role in reducing communities’ vulnerability. The aim of this study is to enhance the current modelling practices of human-flood interaction to draw new insights for FRM policy design. The paper presents a coupled agent-based and flood model for the case of Hamburg, Germany to explore how individual adaptation behaviour is influenced by flood events scenarios, economic incentives, and shared and individual strategies. Simulation results show that a unique trajectory of adaptation measures and flood damages emerge from different flood event series. Another finding is that providing subsidies increases the number of coping households in the long run. Households’ social network also has a strong influence on their coping behaviour. The paper also highlights the role of simple measures such as adapted furnishing, which do not incur any monetary cost, in reducing households vulnerability and preventing millions of euros of contents damage. Generally, we demonstrate that coupled agent-based and flood models can potentially be used as decision support tools to examine the role of household adaptation measures in flood risk management. Although the findings of the paper are case-specific, the improved modelling approach shows the potential to be applied in testing policy levers and strategies considering heterogeneous individual behaviours.