Comprehensive Flood Risk Management : Research for Policy and Practice

Floods cause distress and damage wherever they happen, and flooding from rivers, estuaries and the sea threatens many millions of people in Europe. Insurance losses from flooding have increased significantly since 1990 and flood management in Europe is changing with a move from flood protection and defence to comprehensive flood risk management. Comprehensive Flood Risk Management explores research advances in flood risk analysis and innovations in flood risk management practice, considers all aspects of flood risk, and covers the causes of floods, their impacts on people, property and the environment, and portfolios of risk management measures.

Flood risk management policy across the European Union is changing, partly in response to the EU Floods Directive and partly because of new scientific approaches and research findings. It involves a move towards comprehensive flood risk management, which requires bringing the following fields/domains closer together: the natural sciences, social sciences and arts; science, policy and practice; and engineering, spatial planning and governance. Naturally, this involves preventive fl ood risk management and flood event management, as well as learning from the past and considering future global change.

Comprehensive Flood Risk Management includes about 200 contributions drawn from the 2nd European Conference on Flood Risk Management FLOODrisk2012 (Rotterdam, the Netherlands, 19-23 November 2012). This conference provided a forum for scientists, policy makers, researchers, and practitioners to discuss the practical implications of the latest research findings and to inventory which questions the research community still needs to answer.

FLOODrisk2012, the successor of the 2008 conference held in Oxford, UK, was the initiative of Deltares, Delft, the Netherlands. Comprehensive Flood Risk Management includes the latest results of numerous projects issuing from the European Commission’s Sixth and Seventh Framework Programmes, as well as results of many other national and international research projects from Europe and elsewhere in the world. The book features contributions from natural and social sciences, engineering and spatial planning, as well as practical experiences of policy makers and designers, and covers all aspects of fl ood risk assessment and management: hydraulic loads, reliability of defences and their monitoring, flood hazard analysis, inundation modelling, hazard and risk mapping, estimating economic damage and loss-of-life and integrated flood risk analysis, as well as flood protection, damage and exposure reduction, reducing social vulnerability, policy instruments (zoning, regulations), integrated flood risk management planning and long-term planning for global change, flood prediction and early warning, evacuation and rescue and other aspects of flood event management. Finally, the book discusses risk communication, participatory planning, governance issues, and experiences with the EU Floods Directive.

Comprehensive Flood Risk Management will be of interest to a readership ranging from scientists to practitioners involved in fl ood risk management, and consisting of researchers, consultants, engineers, spatial planners, postgraduate lecturers, students, civil servants, and policy makers.