Flash floods need to be monitored from a safe place, ideally with noncontact instruments installed at a riverbank and oriented so that they look obliquely at the water surface. The “inclined Lidar” technique could be useful for this purpose. It works based on the fact that a near-infrared Lidar mounted with a large incidence angle can detect suspended particles slightly below the surface, provi...

This paper considers the role of social media in the response to the flooding of 2011 in Genoa (Italy), caused by flash floods during torrential rainfall. Volunteer students created a Facebook page to communicate with citizens and organize support and rescue activities. In this paper, we first look at the story of the 2011 Genoa floods from the point of view of the news media to gain insights i...

This paper presents a reconnaissance study of regional flood patterns in the United States, focusing on peak discharges at several recurrence intervals and characteristics of flood-causing rainfall. Because of an interest in flash floods, attention was restricted to watersheds between 10 and 200 km in area. Data were obtained from 130 stream gaging stations with a consistent 30-year period of r...