Title Flood reconstruction in Kullu valley, Himachal Pradesh (India): Implications for Disaster Risk Reduction strategies

The Western Himalayan region is subjected to intense and frequent disasters, resulting from intense rainfall and its steep topography. These characteristics, together with human activities concentrated in the valley, make this region highly susceptible to hydro-meteorological hazards, and frequently led to human losses. In this context, Disaster Risk Management (DRM) policies are the basis for the application of pro-active risk prevention and risk reduction strategies. However, their success will critically depend on system knowledge and hence reliable baseline data of past disasters are pre requisite. Here, we test how newly gained knowledge of past disasters can improve the assessment of hazards and risks and, thus, facilitate the definition of adaptation options, also for future disaster scenarios. To this end, we combined several approaches to compile and understand past flood events and their role in causing recent disasters in Kullu, Himachal Pradesh (India). This study demonstrates that the consideration of past extreme events, not gauged by conventional devices, can clearly modify the hazard assessment. Through a detailed analysis of three flood disasters in the region, we also highlight paradigms of short-comings of conventional, but short time-series in DRM implementation and the role and interaction of civil engineering, public and private sectors as well as end-users on the severity of floods.