Social Innovations and Transformations in Flood Risk Management

Thaler, T. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3869-3722, Kuhlicke, C., & Hartmann, T. (2025). Social Innovations and Transformations in Flood Risk Management. Journal of Flood Risk Management 18 (1) e70008. 10.1111/jfr3.70008.

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Abstract

Flood risk management has changed significantly over the past decades (Kuhlicke et al. 2020). The focus has shifted from flood protection to flood risk management also with the consequence to change the relationship and arrangement between state and nonstate actors (Hartmann and Juepner 2014; Hartmann and Driessen 2017). Flood protection embraces a hazard-based perspective that relies primarily on engineering solutions. It is driven by expert-based and top-down decision-making. Flood risk management include a broader more holistic perspective of dealing with floods, including stronger involvement of nonstate actors (Adger et al. 2013; Hartmann and Driessen 2017; Kuhlicke et al. 2020). A core aim of flood risk management is also to encourage bottom-up innovative solutions for managing flood hazards (Thaler, Attems, and Fuchs 2022; Birkmann et al. 2023; Junger et al. 2023). Nevertheless, the selection process of flood risk management strategies still places a strong emphasis on technical mitigation measures. A significant barrier remains the preference within flood risk management for established and reliable methods over more experimental approaches that could potentially achieve broader objectives. In addition to conventional technical measures, which are often capital-intensive and can lead to environmental degradation, there is a growing need for innovative solutions that can not only effectively reduce flood risks, but also contribute to nature conservation, climate change mitigation, sustainable natural resource management, and the successful implementation of the European Water Framework Directive and the Floods Directive. Moreover, these innovations should aim to deliver societal co-benefits, such as improved quality of life and well-being. However, the success of these innovative concepts depends on social innovations that can drive a societal transformation process.

The concept social innovation has been introduced a long time ago with the aim to overcome lock-in situations and to provide “better” responses to ongoing societal problems, such as managing the housing crises, encouraging our society toward decarbonization, selecting and implementing climate adaptation strategies, dealing other national and international crises and so forth (Hamdouch and Nyseth 2023). The core point of social innovation is the encouragement of social change, including a collective decision-making process. Put differently, social innovation can be understood as a way in which people are aiming at establishing new and more effective answers to the challenges that societies face, while at the same time embedding these solutions in a way that address societal needs (and not only steered towards economic profit). In this way, social innovation puts a greater emphasis compared to other types of innovation on values attached to products, including improving relationships, establishing new forms of cooperation, collaboration, and knowledge sharing. In particular, the concept of social innovation acts a counterresponse to the neoliberalism perspective on innovation and its potentially negative consequences for our society, such as privatization. Consequently, social innovation is also seen as a tool to encourage more democratic processes within political decision-making (Metzger, Allmendinger, and Oosterlynck 2014). Therefore, a core focus of social innovation lies in the support of the citizens to participate within political processes, which can eventually also encourage societal transformation process (Meyer and Hartmann 2025).

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