Structural, dynamic and anthropic conditions that trigger the emergence of the levee effect: insight from a simplified risk-based framework

Levees are the most common structural solution to prevent flooding, reduce damage and generate benefits through more investment/economic activity in floodplain areas. While being relatively easy to build, levee effectiveness can be compromised by poor design and substandard construction methods and maintenance, thus increasing failure probability. Further, levees might increase societal vulnerability by instilling a sense of safety, the so-called "levee effect". To cope with these phenomena, we develop a risk-based framework that quantifies residual risk under levee breaching and the levee effect, by disentangling its structural, dynamic and anthropic components, thus contributing to a better understanding of the phenomena at different spatial scales and the definition of flood risk policies. Through an illustrative example, we show how residual risk might become larger than under natural conditions, as function of the scale of interest, e.g. an area, a line at a given distance from the river, or a point within the floodplain.