ALFA

ALFA stands for ‘Adaptive Land use for Flood Alleviation’. It is an EU-funded project (INTERREG IVB NWE) which aims to protect citizens in the North West Europe region against the effects of the risk of flooding due to climate change. This will be done by creating new capacity for water storage or discharge of peak floods within river catchments in Belgium, France, Germany, United Kingdom and The Netherlands.

Partners of the ALFA project can learn from each others’ flood management approaches and land use concepts. The project focuses on flood adaptation measures and interventions in one area to protect another area which is more vulnerable from an economic, social and/or ecological perspective. The vulnerable area can be either an urban or a rural area, situated up- or downstream of the project area.

New capacity for water storage or discharge will reduce the impact of climate change effects. For example, new floodplains will be created in areas that have not been flooded recently. These project areas will only be flooded in extreme situations to protect citizens in more vulnerable areas up- or downstream from the project areas. Therefore, the present land use functions in these areas will be retained as much as possible. Optimal combinations have to be found between river and other functions, such as agricultural land use, recreation and nature preservation or development.

ALFA is one of the approved transnational projects in the SIC adapt! Cluster. SIC adapt! is a Strategic Initiative Cluster (SIC) of the INTERREG IV B North West Europe (NWE) Programme dealing with adaptation to the impacts of climate change. Eight approved transnational projects originating from seven Member States of the NWE Programme with around 100 partner organisations involved joining public authorities from all levels, scientific institutions, non profit and private organisations.

Project ALFA was one of the first projects looking at the continuum of flood management controls and paired English partners interested in natural flood management in the upper catchment with more standard flood management in the middle to lower reaches. It split the catchment into three areas where water was held, retained and discharged to reduce flood risk. The project generated several best practice outputs including: 1) Best practices on combining farming and forestry with flood protection from the ALFA project, 2) Publication of Eden River Trust. Water Friendly Farming can help keep our rivers clean, reduce flooding, improve farm efficiency and save costs; and 3) Sustainable forestry and reserve retention capacity for extreme flood water on the Rhine. Publication by Rheinland Pfalz.