Flood-prone areas are more often than not held under private property rights. Hence, the purpose of this research is to highlight how crucial private stakeholders are to the effectiveness of any instrument for flood risk and hence directly impact on the effectiveness of flood management and yet, private property rights are rarely highlighted in such schema. Additionally, the location of flood-prone areas upstream or downstream provides an important impulse for the selection of the appropriate instrument to achieve flood risk management.

Land in upstream non-urban areas in Australia and in Europe, is on the whole used for purposes such as agriculture or forestry. The value of these upstream non-urban lands is drawn from their economic utility as agricultural or forestry enterprises, and hence capital worth is associated with the actual use of the land holding. This situation is different from downstream urban lands where generally the land value is closely linked to the capital growth potential of the land in situ. For example, land used for commercial or residential purposes in downstream urban locations albeit flood prone invariably has a potential for uplifting value through intensification in some manner or other of the built form.

The principal results of Australian field research by the authors (jointly with others) suggests such management instruments for private property rights can be effective using Transferable Development Rights (TDRs) in downstream flood-prone urban areas and inverse leaseholds in upstream non-urban areas. This paper concludes through a focus primarily on the use of inverse leaseholds which are revealed as an innovative instrument for non-urban upstream flood-prone areas, rather than TDRs or compulsory acquisition which are arguably more suitable in down-stream urban flood-prone areas.

易发生洪灾的地区往往不属于私有财产权。因此，本研究的目的是强调私人利益相关者对任何洪水风险工具的有效性至关重要，从而直接影响洪水管理的有效性，然而，在这种模式中很少强调私有财产权。此外，易发洪水区域的上游或下游位置为选择合适的工具实现洪水风险管理提供了重要动力。

澳大利亚和欧洲上游非城市地区的土地总体上用于农业或林业等目的。这些上游非城市土地的价值来自其作为农业或林业企业的经济效用，因此资本价值与土地所有权的实际使用有关。这种情况与下游城市土地不同，后者的土地价值通常与原地土地的资本增长潜力紧密相关。例如，在下游城市地区用于商业或住宅目的的土地，尽管容易遭受洪水泛滥，但有可能通过以某种方式或其他形式的集约化来提升价值。

作者（与其他研究者一起）在澳大利亚进行的实地研究的主要结果表明，此类私有财产权管理工具可以在易受洪水泛滥的下游城市地区使用可转让发展权（TDR），并在上游非城市地区使用反向租赁而有效。本文的最后重点是使用反向租赁权，这种租赁权被揭示为非城市上游易发洪水地区的一种创新工具，而不是TDR或强制性购置，后者可能更适合于下游城市易发洪水地区。