Increasingly, studies are warning that the risk of flooding is rapidly rising due to the overlapping effects of climate change and fast urbanization. While various coping strategies are debated at different levels, e.g., politicians, authorities, planners and individual households among others, decision-making is hampered by multiple scientific knowledge gaps and the lack of effective measures at the local level. To discuss the details of whether, where and how local people can enhance their resilience to flood risks, the Chair of Human Geography at LMU Munich held a two-day international workshop (01-02 December 2022) on community-level flood risk and resilience. The workshop is a planned event of the Sino-German Mobility Program “FReCom”, jointly conducted by LMU Munich and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

LMU Vice president Prof. Dr. Francesca Biagini presented a welcome speech to all the participants and opened the workshop. She especially mentioned the flood and landslide events that she experienced in Italy and encourages more research efforts on enhancing resilience at local communities. Then Prof. Xiangzheng Deng from CAS Beijing and Prof. Matthias Garschagen at LMU Munich as the workshop conveners also welcomed all participants. Prof. Deng’s keynote talk on urban flood risk management kicked off the scientific discussions of the workshop.

Over the two days, 27 presentations were given by a diverse group of speakers from different parts of the world. Together with the keynote talks by Prof. Sally Priest (Middlesex University, UK), Prof. Markus Disse (TU Munich) and Prof. Matthias Garschagen (LMU Munich), the workshop covered most of the front topics of flood risk and resilience studies, including resilience scenarios, household and property level resilience measures, flood memories, flood experiences, flood management in informal settlements, resilience modeling, citizen science, etc. Dr. Emlyn Yang and Dr. Anne von Streit moderated the session slots.

At the panel discussion, the panel members Sally, Anne, Markus and Matthias discussed the selected topics on challenges in community flood studies, research comparison and transferring, risk trends vs resilience building, and research priorities for the near future. Hot discussion continued with many questions from the audiences.

At the end of the workshop, three Best Presentation Awards was awarded to: Rongkun Liu, Ohio State University, USA Ed Rollason, Northumbria University, UK Bokjin Ro, Sungkunkwan University, South Korea

About 40 people (including speakers and audiences) attended the workshop in presence at the meeting hall of the AGV München near Marienplatz, and around 50 people jointed online.

Thanks to Dr. Emlyn Yang who took lead in coordinating and organizing the workshop, and to the PhD students: Wenhan Feng, Yongqiang Fang, Yuhan Yang and Jiachang Tu who supported in carrying out the workshop from early preparations to the end.

Announcement of the workshop Agenda of the workshop