Increased flooding is becoming more prevalent under an increasingly variable future of weather extremes, highlighting the need for effective mitigation strategies. Different flood mitigation measures are available, ranging from classical structural (grey) solutions to nature-based solutions (NbS). This study assessed and compared the hydrological effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, and public perception of green (NbS), grey, and hybrid flood mitigation measures in the Gradascica River catchment, Slovenia. For the hydrological assessment, a SWAT + model simulated wetland, retention polder, and dam scenarios. Results showed that wetlands had a minimal effect on flood hazard, reducing flood peaks by up to 3 %, while retention polders and dams reduced flood peaks by 51 % and 73 % and flood volumes by 28 % and 58 %, respectively. The economic analysis found wetlands to be less cost-effective than retention polders and dams. However, it should be noted that wetlands provide additional diverse co-benefits. The public perception analysis revealed significant discrepancies in perceived effectiveness, feasibility, and acceptability of flood mitigation measures across target groups, including the general public, water engineers, researchers, and agricultural advisors. While most groups ranked dams as most effective and wetlands as least effective, aligning with hydrological findings, researchers held a directly opposing view, and the public generally overestimated the performance of green measures. By examining hydrological effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, and public perception across flood mitigation measures, the research highlights the need to integrate multidisciplinary approaches to develop robust flood management strategies - an essential lens as communities confront escalating climate-driven flood risks.

The first phase of qualitative research is often hindered by the time-consuming process of transcribing and analyzing low-quality audio interviews. This paper introduces a novel human-in-the-loop pipeline that leverages Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to overcome these. Our case study focuses on flood-related interviews conducted in North Bohemia, Czech Republic, in Czech, a language for which many AI models have not yet been optimized. Our proposed methodology employs MLLMs for both generating quantifiable, emotionally nuanced interview stimuli and for reconstructing interview transcripts from poor audio recordings. The initial AI-generated transcriptions are then refined and validated by a human, ensuring high accuracy and contextual integrity. Subsequently, a RAG system is utilized for efficient and transparent thematic analysis of the corrected transcripts. Our results demonstrate that this hybrid approach can achieve over 99

Climate change is expected to affect the frequency, magnitude and seasonality of various precipitation-related hazards, including flooding as one of the costliest hazards in Europe. As natural hazards have a significant impact on infrastructure, human lives, and habitats, it is clear that adaptation measures aimed at both prevention and mitigation need to be considered to address climate change. Green (referred to as Nature-based) measures are currently being promoted by the European Union, but in some planning contexts these measures may not be fully capable of coping with predicted future climate hazards, especially in the case of extreme events. Furthermore, the implementation of such measures is often met with resistance from planning departments and decision makers due to institutional dependencies created by the use of grey infrastructure measures in the past. In addition, scepticism about the effectiveness of green measures goes hand in hand with a preference for grey measures. Hybrid measures do have a prevailing green visual look, they can fulfil some ecosystem services, but they require substantial technical equipment for implementation and may present a feasible complementary measure in planning context with limited space or already existing infrastructure. These solutions therefore combine parts of grey and green measures and present an alternative that can reflect the diversity of environmental conditions. This study evaluated the effectiveness of selected green (e.g. urban trees, rain gardens), grey (e.g. drywells, permeable sidewalks) and hybrid (e.g. green roofs, stormwater tree tranches) measures on flood risk using hydrological modelling with the HEC-HMS software. This study was carried out in order to define the most effective and suitable flood protection measures for the selected case study, the Glinšcica river basin in the municipality of Ljubljana in Slovenia. Based on the hydrological modelling performed, rain gardens were found to be the most effective measure in terms of reducing peak runoff and runoff volume for the Glinšcica river model. Both green roofs and stormwwater cisterns also showed relatively good results compared to the other measures. The hydrological study was combined with a public perception survey in which we investigated the acceptance, feasibility and effectiveness from the perspective of the Slovenian public. Therefore, we were interested in whether there are differences in the perception of the selected green, grey and hybrid flood risk management measures. We were also interested in which of the contextual (e.g., flood exposure and experience) and compositional (e.g., socio-demographics) factors influence public perception of the acceptability, feasibility, and effectiveness of these measures. Acknowledgment: The research was conducted within the project [Evaluation of hazard-mitigating hybrid infrastructure under climate change scenarios] co-granted by Slovenian Research Agency (J6-4628) and Czech Science Foundation (22-04520L).

Nature-based solutions (NBS) in Flood Risk Management require more—and mostly privately owned—land, and more diverse stakeholder involvement than traditional (grey) engineering approaches. This also implies that there are challenges related to different disciplines. Flood risk management with NBS is an issue not only of technical expertise, but it asks for land-use planning, economics, property rights, sociology, landscape planning, ecology, hydrology, agriculture and other disciplines to cope with the challenges of implementing them. Nature-based FRM is thus an inter- and transdisciplinary endeavor.

Various flood risk mitigation measures such as green, hybrid and grey measures can be applied to reduce flood risk, which is expected to increase in the future due to climate change. While recent studies on flood risk perception have provided robust empirical evidence of social and regional differences in risk perception, comparative studies on the perception of flood risk management measures are lacking. Across Europe, there are significant differences in the preferred approaches to flood risk management and the identified barriers to their application. As part of this study, we examined the perception of various flood risk management measures in Slovenia, Czechia and the Netherlands. The following concepts were taken into consideration: effectiveness, feasibility and acceptability.The public perception survey was conducted in the three countries via a self-administered online survey with the support of the external company (Bezak et al., 2024). In all three countries, a representative sample (n = 1000) was taken into account considering spatial and socio-demographic characteristics (quota sample). The selected flood risk management measures were divided into three categories: green, grey and a combination of green and grey (hybrid). The visual appearance (green, grey and hybrid), the extent of ecosystem services provided (zero, substantial and in-between) and the construction effort required (substantial, minimal and medium) were used to classify the measures. During the survey, respondents were only shown the drawing of the measure, not the description or the name of the measure. The following measures were considered: rain garden, wetland, tree trench, retention pond, cistern, dam (Bezak et al., 2024). In addition, three groups of experts were also included in the survey in Slovenia: water engineers, researchers working in the field of water management and agricultural workers.In terms of individual flood protection measures, respondents (general public) in all three countries tend to view conventional grey measures (i.e., dams and cisterns) as more effective and acceptable, but more difficult to implement. This is in contrast to green and hybrid measures, which are considered feasible but less effective and acceptable. The degree of perceived effectiveness, feasibility and acceptance varies from country to country (Bezak et al., 2024). A similar perception was also noted by three expert groups in Slovenia, where researchers were the only group to consider green measures (i.e., wetlands) more effective than grey measures (i.e., dams). While water engineers and agricultural workers had similar perception as the general public, with water engineers clearly preferring classic flood risk management solutions such as dams. While specific projects and initiatives can benefit from knowledge of the individual determinants of flood risk perception, transnational policies and strategies should pay more attention to the specific patterns of perception in individual countries. Reference:Bezak et al., 2024. Investigating the public perception of green, hybrid and grey flood risk management measures in Europe. Progress in Disaster Science, 23, 100360, 10.1016/j.pdisas.2024.100360. Acknowledgment: The research was conducted within the project [Evaluation of hazard-mitigating hybrid infrastructure under climate change scenarios] co-granted by Slovenian Research Agency (J6-4628) and Czech Science Foundation (22-04520L).

Floods cause damage to lands and thereby often prevent property owners from using their property in the way they intend. Because of flood damage, property owners face challenges such as destruction and decreased value of their property, not finding tenants, etc. While land policy predominantly treats damage as solely economic, it also has emotional and social implications. Memories linked to a home, a spatial attachment to a specific piece of land, or a family legacy are only a few examples. Just like the values that property owners assign to their properties differ, so do their perceptions of damage. Perception of property forms the basis that shapes how damage is perceived. Despite the vast literature on risk perception and awareness, discussions in flood management mainly focus on assessing the likelihood of disasters. Noticeably, there is a lack of emphasis on flood damage itself, especially concerning damage to private property. Considering that the definition of damage influences the land policy measures taken on private property, there is a need to explore property owners' perceptions of damage to provide more effective land policy responses. Therefore, this research analyzes how property owners perceive and interpret flood damage on their private property. Social aspects such as personal experience, cultural background, and demographic profile all influence these perceptions. Furthermore, this research outlines how the mismatch between land policies and property owners' perceptions of damage is an obstacle to effectively combating the consequences of flooding on private property. A qualitative case study is conducted in a small-scale district in T & uuml;rkiye's Western Black Sea Basin. This study includes narrative interviews with local property owners. These interviews reveal the property owners' multiple perceptions of flood damage and show the mismatch between land policy responses and the needs of the property owners. The findings from this research show that the existing land policy instruments are often too generic and are not tailored to the needs of the property owners.

Abstract To reduce pluvial and fluvial flood risks throughout the catchment, land is needed for the implementation of flood risk measures. Especially nature-based solutions require plenty of land to store water and direct runoff water in the hinterland, riverine land, and urban areas. Most land, however, is privately owned. Mobilizing private land for flood risk management is considered a challenge of spatial flood risk management and requires specific strategies to involve landowners. Mobilizing private land for flood risk management is not a matter of obtaining land by land acquisition but, rather, a challenge of gaining access to land using land policy strategies. Gaining access to private land depends on the efficiency, effectiveness, and legitimacy of these strategies and differs across the catchment. It is also influenced by biophysical and sociopolitical conditions and also conditions created by stakeholders that differ in the hinterland, riverine land, and urban areas. Implementation challenges and land policy strategies differ in the three sections of the catchment. In the hinterland, many small-scale measures are needed to effectively reduce flood risk. The causal relationship between measures and their effects is more diffuse, complicating the selection of specific locations. However, a higher number of measures leads to greater effectiveness. Motivating landowners to voluntary provide access to their land seems to be the preferred way forward in the hinterland. In riverine land, the cause–effect relationships of measures are more obvious and understood by landowners. Thus, to get access to private land, “hard” strategies such as restricting land use or expropriation are more effective. Gaining access to this fertile land next to rivers often requires financial compensation. In urban areas, the challenges are centered around the fact that there are numerous landowners who own small pieces of land. These landowners build and rebuild in flood-prone urban areas, being unaware, unable, or unwilling to reduce their flood risk with measures. A wider variety of strategies are required to address these landowners. Sometimes these are more informative, sometimes more incentive-based, and sometimes more restricting. Thus, successful mobilization of private land for flood risk management requires a nuanced understanding of the specific challenges and tailored land policy strategies across the catchment. By adopting tailored land policy strategies, policymakers can enhance the effectiveness, efficiency, and legitimacy of implementing flood risk measures across the catchment.

Climate change is expected to affect the frequency and magnitude of floods, which are among the costliest hazards in Europe. As natural hazards have a significant impact on infrastructure and people's lives and their habitats, novel measures to cope with climate change need to be considered. Different types of measures, such as green, grey and hybrid solutions, can be used to mitigate the impacts of natural hazards. Green measures (also referred to as nature-based solutions) are currently being promoted in the European Union, but several barriers to implementing these measures exist. The question arises as to what hinders the wider implementation of green measures and therefore results in a preference for conventional grey measures in some countries. This study examines the differences in the perceived effectiveness, feasibility and acceptance of different types of flood risk management measures in three European countries (Slovenia, Czechia, and the Netherlands). The results show statistically significant differences in the perceived effectiveness, feasibility and acceptance of the studied measures. With respect to individual measures, respondents in all three countries tend to view conventional grey measures (dams and cisterns) as more effective and acceptable than green and hybrid measures. However, grey measures are perceived as difficult to implement. The results reveal that the perceived effectiveness and acceptability of the measures are related. The major drivers affecting the differences in the perceptions of different measures are the countries of the respondents and the sociodemographic variables of income and age. In contrast to other studies, experiences with past floods and private insurance are not statistically significant. Our results thus indicate that, along with individual behaviour, aggregate social drivers should be considered when implementing flood risk management measures across the EU.

Modifications to land can serve to jointly reduce risks of floods and droughts to people and to ecosystems. Whether land modifications are implemented will depend on the willingness and ability of a diversity of actors. This article reviews the state of knowledge on land modification use in areas exposed to dual hydrologic risks and the land owners, managers, and users who directly make decisions about action on lands they control. The review presents a typology of land modifications and explains how land modifications interact with the hydrological cycle to reduce risks. It then addresses the roles and perspectives of the land owners, managers, and users undertaking land modifications, summarizing theories explaining motivations for, as well as barriers to and enablers of, land modification implementation. The analysis reveals geographical differences in narratives on land modifications as well as knowledge gaps regarding variation across actors and types of land modifications.

Climate change is expected to affect the frequency, magnitude, and seasonality of several rainfall-related hazards, including flooding as one of the costliest hazards in Europe. Recent studies have shown that flood risk in Europe is both increasing and decreasing, with increases in most eastern and southern European countries, including Slovenia and Czechia. In addition, significant changes in the seasonal occurrence of floods have also been observed in Europe, thus challenging conventional approaches to flood risk management.As natural hazards have major impacts on infrastructure, human lives, and habitats, and cause large social and economic damages, it is clear that adaptation measures aimed at both prevention and mitigation of impacts must be considered to cope with climate change. To deal with the changing occurrence and characteristics of floods, different types of measures need to be adopted, including green, blue, and grey measures or combinations of these. Although their application is currently emphasized, purely green or blue-green measures in some cases may not be insufficient to cope with predicted future climate hazards. Additionally, implementation of such measures often encounter resistance in planning departments and among decision makers due to institutional path dependency related to the history of utilizing grey infrastructure measures. This is especially the case for some Central-Eastern European countries. An alternative are hybrid solutions that combine parts of grey and green infrastructure, since these kinds of measures can reflect the variety of environmental conditions. However, not much attention has been given to the documentation and evaluation of hybrid infrastructure in comparison to purely green measures. Hence, there are still several open questions related to the implementation and functioning of solutions combining elements of green and grey measures, so called hybrid solutions.The main objective of this contribution is to present the theoretical framework, research design and initial research steps of a newly launched international project focusing on: (i) enhancement of documentation and standardization related to hybrid solutions, (ii) development and testing of applicability and social acceptability of specific hybrid infrastructure in different environments and climate change scenarios, and (iii) environmental modelling and evaluation of effectiveness of different measures from the perspective of the flood risk management. Within the project, the effects of hybrid solutions on flood hazard and hydrological regime of the landscape will be modelled for selected small catchments in Slovenia and Czechia, but the standardization of hybrid solutions will enable to extrapolate our results beyond Central and Eastern Europe. Acknowledgment: The research was conducted within the project [Evaluation of hazard-mitigating hybrid infrastructure under climate change scenarios] co-granted by Slovenian Research Agency (J6-4628) and Czech Science Foundation (22-04520L).

Scholars and practitioners endorse public participation in the decision-making process as enhancing the health of democracy, justice, and effectiveness of policy outcomes. To sustain or even increase the number of participants in the long run, it is crucial to start raising a new politically active generation already during their youth and even early adolescence. This article presents School Forums as an extracurricular participatory method involving early adolescents (11-15 years old) in decision-making concerning their school and municipality. We made a field experiment on a sample of 480 Czech secondary school pupils to examine the potential of School Forums to enhance prerequisites for youth's political engagement. Our results revealed a positive effect of School Forum attendance on the sense of internal political efficacy and interest in local affairs. The results suggest a high potential of participative extracurricular programmes in raising a new generation of politically active citizens.

Flood risk management (FRM) aims to integrate necessary technical measures with environmental and societal approaches. Focusing on the process and governance of how to plan, implement, and maintain solutions therefore becomes essential. Among the different stakeholders, landowners are a key group to be considered. This contribution elaborates on the interconnections between land policy, FRM and private land ownership. It is based on the European COST Action network LAND4FLOOD, which brings together academics and stakeholders from various disciplines and more than 35 countries. We argue for a less project oriented and more process oriented approach, a focus on land management and more emphasis on small‐scale measures. This represents a break with some of the recent working paradigms of FRM.

Urban areas are hot spots of flood risk due to how urban development concentrates people and assets into hazard prone areas, reinforcing negative externalities on the welfare of urban residents. Mitigating flood risk in urban environments, however, is challenging. This is not only because the process generating flood risk is complex, but the objectives of city planners, residents and/or developers are also multi-faceted. Therefore, there are various trade-offs to be considered. One such problem across many areas of Europe and beyond is how to regenerate declined urban areas, to improve the welfare, prosperity, and image of the city. However, in turn, many areas within these cities will see this activity being traded-off against increased flood risk. Cost-benefit analysis rep-resents a useful approach for assessing this trade-off, as a decision-support tool. In this paper we present an exploratory cost-benefit analysis of a potential urban regeneration project within the city of usti nad Labem (Czechia) that seeks to highlight the potential magnitude of such trade-offs that need to be more often actively considered as a core, rather than peripheral, element of urban regeneration. We present an exploratory frame-work that can be expanded upon and integrated into wider regeneration visions.

The major event that hit Europe in summer 2021 reminds society that floods are recurrent and among the costliest and deadliest natural hazards. The long-term flood risk management (FRM) efforts preferring sole technical measures to prevent and mitigate floods have shown to be not sufficiently effective and sensitive to the environment. Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) mark a recent paradigm shift of FRM towards solutions that use nature-derived features, processes and management options to improve water retention and mitigate floods. Yet, the empirical evidence on the effects of NBS across various settings remains fragmented and their implementation faces a series of institutional barriers. In this paper, we adopt a community expert perspective drawing upon LAND4FLOOD Natural flood retention on private land network (https://www.land4flood.eu) in order to identify a set of barriers and their cascading and compound interactions relevant to individual NBS. The experts identified a comprehensive set of 17 barriers affecting the implementation of 12 groups of NBS in both urban and rural settings in five European regional environmental domains (i.e., Boreal, Atlantic, Continental, Alpine-Carpathian, and Mediterranean). Based on the results, we define avenues for further research, connecting hydrology and soil science, on the one hand, and land use planning, social geography and economics, on the other. Our suggestions ultimately call for a transdisciplinary turn in the research of NBS in FRM.

Nature-based solutions (NbS) are often framed positively in terms of win–win options or no-regret measures. However, are NbS equally beneficial for everyone? Are burdens and benefits of NbS really equally distributed and projects embraced by everyone? Is the process leading to the implementation of NbS always fair and inclusive? This chapter provides a broad overview of different environmental justice issues, critically reflecting on NbS through recognition justice, procedural justice, and distributive justice. Whereas the current critical literature focuses particularly on urban NbS, this chapter focuses on the wider translocal consequences of NbS projects. The theoretical reflections are illustrated with case studies of NbS from various countries: the recognition of marginalised women in Vietnam in mangrove restoration projects, the challenges when introducing procedural justice in implementing NbS in Serbia, the legal injustices locals are faced in the Czech Republic when they want to implement NbS, the trade-off between public collective and individual economic interest when implementing a sand nourishment project in the Netherlands, and the development of a beneficiary-pays based upstream–downstream compensation scheme in Austria.

Climate change adaptation planning is of high urgency in cities due to expected climate change impacts. Ecosystem-based approaches to adaptation (EbAs) are considered highly efficient in enhancing sustainable resilience of cities; however, incorporation of EbA measures into the decision-making process has not been fully achieved at the individual city level. The study illustrates how to initiate strategical adaptation planning "from the scratch" and facilitate the implementation of an adaptation planning process based on examples of three pilot cities in the Czech Republic (Prague, Pilsen, and Brno), using the outputs and experiences gained from participatory workshops and gathered stakeholder and institutional evidence. We focus particularly on stakeholder's perception of climate change related risks as well as prioritization of specific EbA measures and the institutional context of the decision making processes concerning implementation of those measures in order to enhance adaptation planning. The results show that the prioritization and suitability of individual EbA measures substantially varies among the analysed cities, depending on the local setting and associated climate-related risks. While low awareness of the problem and the non-existence of the institutional framework can be severe barriers to EbA measures implementation, strong cooperation between the city, NGOs and academics creates a supportive environment for such innovative solutions. We aim to provide Central and Eastern European context of urban EbA adaptation planning using participatory approaches, stakeholder perception and institutional analysis, which is currently not much covered from the regional perspective.