In the aftermath of the severe flooding in Central Europe in August 2002, a number of changes in flood policies were launched in Germany and other European countries, aiming at improved risk management. The question arises as to whether these changes have already had an impact on the residents’ ability to cope with floods, and whether flood-affected private households are now better prepared th...

The Pearl River Delta (PRD) has one of the most complicated deltaic drainage systems with probably the highest density of crisscross-river network in the world. This article presents a regional flood frequency analysis and recognition of spatial patterns for flood-frequency variations in the PRD region using the well-known index flood L-moments approach together with some advanced statistical t...

A general kinematic wave model for flood propagation is presented in the form of a scalar conservation law. The corresponding flux function is convex or nearly convex for regular cross-sections of the river. In the presence of pronounced irregularities, however, convexity may fail. Qualitative consequences of the shape of the flux function for typical irregularities are discussed, particularly ...

Conventionally flood mapping typically includes only a static water level (e.g. peak of a storm tide) in coastal flood inundation events. Additional factors become increasingly important when increased water-level thresholds are met during the combination of a storm tide and increased mean sea level. This research incorporates factors such as wave overtopping and river flow in a range of flood ...

Flood hazards are the most common and destructive of all natural disasters. For decades, experts have been examining how flood losses can be mitigated. Just as in other risk domains, the study of risk perception and risk communication has gained increasing interest in flood risk management. Because of this research growth, a review of the state of the art in this domain is believed necessary. T...

An integrated framework is presented for sustainability-based flood hazard mapping of the Swannanoa River watershed in the state of North Carolina, U.S. The framework uses a hydrologic model for rainfall–runoff transformation, a two-dimensional unsteady hydraulic model flood simulation and a GIS-based multi-criteria decision-making technique for flood hazard mapping. Economic, social, and envir...

Flood is one of the most devastating natural hazards which lead to the loss of lives, properties and resources. It has therefore become important to create easily read, rapidly accessible flood hazard map, which will prioritize the mitigation effects. This study addresses the need for an efficient and cost-effective methodology for preparing flood hazard maps in Ghana, particularly those region...

JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY WATER RESEARCH & EDUCATION The Great Midwest Flood of 1993 brought the attention of the nation to the challenges it faced in dealing with floods. Over a sixmonth period, the ravages of the flood were shown nightly on television and filled columns in the print media. East–West transportation networks throughout the Midwest were severely disrupted and more than 100,000 peo...

Flood forecasts are essential to issue reliable flood warnings and to initiate flood control measures on time. The accuracy and the lead time of the predictions for head waters primarily depend on the meteorological forecasts. Ensemble forecasts are a means of framing the uncertainty of the potential future development of the hydro-meteorological situation. This contribution presents a flood ma...

The basic principles underlying the most commonly used physically-based models of the rainfall-runoff transformation process are reviewed. A thorough knowledge of these principles is a pre-requisite for flood hazard studies and, thus, this chapter reviews several physically-based methods to determine flood discharges, flow depths, and other flood characteristics. The chapter starts with a thoro...