Project Objective:
The aim of the project was a theoretical analysis of flood damages from the economic point of view and its application to real data and the information available after the floods in 1997 and 2002.

Brief Summary:

The project focused mainly on elaborating an economic classification of flood damages and a detailed analysis of the public expenditures spent as a direct reaction to the catastrophic floods in 1997 and 2002.

During the first year of the project a methodology for an economic evaluation of flood events, possible state protection and their social consequences was elaborated. The research, in the framework of flood protection, was (and to a large extent remains) the domain of hydrologists, meteorologists and water managers. The project had ambitions to extend this field to economic knowledge, i. e. on a scientific search for effective solutions which take into account limited social resources.

In 2005 a detailed analysis of state budget expenditures and other expenditures for floods in 1997 and 2002 was elaborated. The data was sorted by many criteria; the expenditures were compared with the amount of structural damages according to the type of the damaged property and its locality. The output was complemented with brief information from the insurance sector’s point of view. The methods for evaluating public expenditures efficiency in the field of flood protection were proposed.

The final part of the project focused on public discussion about the form of flood protection in the Czech Republic. The existence of considerable differences in the opinions of water management versus environmental orientated scientists were unearthed during the discussions. The outputs of the project contain concrete recommendations for improving the system of flood protection in the Czech Republic, especially in medium-term.