Rethinking Resilience: Can Dikes Save Korsør from Drowning?

Abstract: In 2006, the city of Korsør in Slagelse Municipality in Denmark experienced the worst storm surge recorded in history. In order to prevent greater damage of buildings and sensitive infrastructures in the future, dikes and evacuation procedures have been brought up for discussion. This thesis examines resilience to flooding in Korsør by conducting in-depth qualitative interviews with a resident from one of the dike groups representing citizens in the Halsskov area, and two project leaders from the municipality to talk about the rationale of official strategies. The framework developed by Restemeyer et al. (2015) has been applied to assess the flood resilience strategies in respect to ‘robustness’, ‘adaptability’ and ‘transformability’. Through the findings and analysis, four major attributes are uncovered to explain why technical measures are favoured above others, but also why building dikes are being prevented to become a reality: lack of finance and resources, clash of motivation between the residents, rigid bureaucracy and differentiation between practicality and creativity. Nevertheless, technical measures are not contradictory to a resilience strategy as robustness is part of resilience. In the case of Korsør, there is thus great evidence to explain how the municipality and the residents in Halsskov are well on the way to adopting resilience-based strategies, though still has a few obstacles to deal with.