Objectives Large scale planning in the Thai context is, in the current state, not an effective way of dealing with flood risk in an integrated way. There is a lack of cooperation between different government institutions and agencies and communities and companies take their own measures to ensure flood protection (Ryser & Franchini, 2015). Looking from the current situation, it would be beneficial for the city of Bangkok to, besides current large scale measures, stimulate the private sector and civil society to try to realize small scale interventions that together can contribute to the flood protection of a large part of the city. An example of this is illustrated in figure 2.2. A lot of villages along tributaries are building floodwalls to keep water out of their town. But if all villages along the river system would do this, the storage capacity along the line of the river decreases dramatically, causing a larger flow of water towards southern urban areas like Bangkok. If villages would find solutions on a local scale to store water, this would benefit the system on a larger scale. These villages have a long history of living with water and a traditional lifestyle which is adapted to the water. In Bangkok large parts of the old canal network is filled up and replaced by roads, or thanons, which now results in an insufficient discharge capacity. The trend of modernisation in urban Bangkok is also spreading to more rural areas like the villages in Ayutthaya. Rather than continuing living in harmony with the cycles of dry and wet seasons, people desire a lifestyle in which the former has no part. With the long history of tradition of living with water there must be ways to clear or widen these canals and keep people living along these waters. Instead of perceiving the solution to the problem from the large scale to the smaller scale, the objective is to find a way to intervene on the small scale in such a way
Ayutthaya
Ayutthaya
Bangkok
Bangkok
Figure 2.2 Principal conclusion of the workshop of the ICAADE 2015, about water management in rural areas in Ayutthaya province. If cities and villages along the rivers build floodwalls, the amount of water and the velocity of that water that flows to Bangkok increases. If water is stored along the entire line of the rivers, the discharge and threat towards Bangkok might decrease. (Source: Author)
that it provides added value for the larger scale. This is aimed to be done by taken the tradition of living with water into account and to find ways to learn from this and apply it in a way that is conform the demands of modern-day society. Main objective The main objective of the research is to find ways to create small scale interventions that benefit the flood defence system on the city scale and that ensure socio-economic stability for residents of informal klong communities that will be part of the small scale interventions. For this the tension between water management measures and informal settlements is studied. Instead of eviction is there a way to increase the discharge capacity of the canals whilst upgrade the existing settlements on-site? Can this mixed-
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