Questionnaire on methodologies referring to floods, threats mapping and risks
1. Questionnaire goal and scope
This goal of this survey is two-fold: on the one hand, it is meant to identify the most important
problems each country’s water management system has to deal with in order to control the floods in
plain areas; on the other hand, the answers given to this questionnaire shall contribute to identifying
those methods and procedures converging to a common approach of floods mapping and prevention.
The survey has four sections, as follows. The first question contains the contact details of the
interviewed person, as well her or his subordination to other prevailing institutions. The second section is
oriented to identifying the most frequently used GIS application, as well as the existing cartographic
support within each country. An important piece of information is the other institution towards the
interviewee is changing the information, as well as the projection system used in each country. A great
deal of information is collected about the existing flood maps, about historical floods, hazard and other
types of maps.
The third section is the more technical than the prior one, and it is meant to collect all relevant
pieces of information about flood risk assessment, while the forth section deals with assessing the
vulnerabilities, the existing assessment of the economic loss that might be produced by floods.
Most of the questions have predefined answers wherever it was possible, and all positive
answered are backed-up with open answers providing more information about specific issues like the
name or other indicative of the watershed, the year when a specific map has been created or updated, or
the structures on which the preventive measures relies. This third section is divided into three separate
sub-section: 1) general methodology (how the flood threat is foreseen, how often the input data is being
updated, the structures available and considered in food prevention); 2) hydrological aspects and 3)
hydraulic aspects, that go through some very specific issues like the land use, hydraulic models mapping
requirements, and so forth. The forth section goes with methodological issues referring to how the flood
damages are being evaluated, as well as the infrastructure and landscape-related details worth being
taking into account (water pipe network, sewage system network, electricity, land value, etc.).
2. Brief presentation of the test survey
The survey was tested on 30 persons who had to fill all answers according to their experience,
skills, and knowledge. The survey was distributed in hard copy version, being taped afterwards on the
web site. Although the printed version is structured accordingly, some respondents paid little attention to
the consistency of their answers, while other respondents simply skip some questions. Some statistics
can be produced in order to highlight some common procedures, methods or communication channels
used by a group of stakeholders, some common misperceptions about certain issues, or common
problems people might face with in case of floods, like which are the main structures used in given
watershed for preventing floods, where the damages cannot be appraised because there is no inventory of
the facilities or agricultural land prone to floods and so forth. In the next section some statistics produced
by the electronic survey system, which is implemented onto the project web site are presented.
3. Basic statistics and facilities provided by the electronic surveying
system
The first facility a user might take advantage is the possibility to break and later resume the
process of entering the data into the same questionnaire; thanks to that, users with slow internet
connections, likely to interrupt the input process, have the opportunity to save from time to time the
already entered data, avoiding so any loss of already taped information. The user is not stressed at all
when she or he must enter data because whenever she or he needs, the process can be interrupted and
resumed later. The whole survey can further be verified on line, allowing for editing or deleting one or
more records, which can be selected through check boxes. If more records are to be deleted, they have to
be erased one by one – see Figure 1.
Figure 1 The check-box corresponding to one record and the three functions available: visualization,
editing and deleting
The on-line questionnaire contains three types of controls: check boxes, radio-buttons and
frames. It also allows defining compulsory fields wherever is it necessary, logical leaps to other sections
of the questionnaire providing that certain conditions as well import and export facilities using the CSV
(comma separated values) common format. Very important, all data can be exported in SPSS or R
format, which further allows professional statistical analysis carried with one of the two-benchmark
software.
The data can also be exported in excel format, meaning that any statistics can be produced off-line, in a
flexible way.
Figure 2 General filters implemented onto the questionnaire area
The embedded statistics functions are based on filters and two types of graphs can be automatically
produced: pie graphs and bar graphs, based on some selection criterion already defined. Nevertheless,
the user is not confined to these graphs due to the export facility, already mentioned.
The filters at hand are presented in Figure 2. One can see the system produces subtotals on data
filtered according to two main keys: the response ID (which is automatically assigned after entering each
survey) and the submission date. The output can be one of the three standard types: HTML, PDF and
Excel, which increase the results portability.
4. Example of statistical analysis on survey
As already mentioned statistical analysis makes sense for the second, the third and the forth
sections, where different types of answers can be counted. The following paragraph refers to the second
section, which is being focused on the mapping system and available cartography. All graphs are
presented in a table and some comments are attached, where it is necessary.
Figure 3 “Do you use a GIS system?”
Most of respondents reported that GIS is being
used within an SQL server platform
Figure 5 „Do you have indicative or general
flood maps?”
General and indicative flood maps are available,
most of them being at hand in hard copy and
digital formats.
Figure 4 Do you exchange information with
other organization?
Surprisingly, some respondents said they have no
contact with other organizations. All people who
are exchanging information with other structures,
reported that communal, municipal and county
inspectorates for emergency situations are
important stakeholders.
Figure 6 Does the hazard methodology take into
account flood defense structures?
Since 41% respondents gave no answer to this
question, further respondents shall pay more
attention to the consistency and correlations
between answers
Figure 7 “Which is the scope (coverage) of
existing flood maps?”
Existing flood maps cover important flood prone
areas, most of them being available at regional
level, which actually is large water basins like
Somes, Siret and other important Romanian rivers.
Figure 9 Types of flood defense structures taken
into account
The comments corresponding to the maximum
discharge approach and structural defense apply
for this question too.
Figure 8 Has the maximum discharge approach
been used?
Other professional stakeholders shall carefully
consider this question; 334% non-respondents is a
doubtful figure. The operators shall pinpoint how
important is keeping the internal consistency of
whole survey
Figure 10 “Does the model take into account
land-use information
Different types of land-use, different types of soil
and other features are important for tuning up
appropriate flood modes. Such a large share of “no
answer, neither positive, nor negative, is brought
about by carelessness. Further respondents shall
pay more attention to all technical issues.
Figure 12 Has flood vulnerability/consequences
been assessed?
Figure 11 Does the model take into account
different scenarios, like dyke failure?
The same comments made for all technical
questions also apply. In most cases, the flood
management considers a single scenario, which
could be very dangerous whenever multiple factors
and causes collide.
In general, all consequences can be roughly
assessed, but the accuracy of these assessments is
another issue. Because the last page of the survey
is very complex, and all questions refer to open
and protected floodplain, with only 30 surveyed it
is quite difficult to draw some conclusions.