Flood damage can be minimised by ensuring optimum capacity to drainage structures. An underdesign of these structures increases flood damage cost whereas an overdesign incurs unnecessary expenses. The optimum design of water infrastructures depends largely on reliable estimation of design floods which is a flood discharge associated with a given annual exceedance probability. For design flood e...

UNLABELLED Flooding is the most common and damaging of all natural disasters in the United States, and was a factor in almost all declared disasters in U.S. HISTORY Direct flood losses in the U.S. in 2011 totaled $8.41 billion and flood damage has also been on the rise globally over the past century. The National Flood Insurance Program paid out more than $38 billion in claims since its incep...

This chapter proposes an integrated direct and indirect flood risk model for small and large-scale flood events, allowing for dynamic modelling of total economic losses from a flood event to a full economic recovery. A novel approach is taken which translates direct losses of both capital and labour into production losses using the Cobb-Douglas production function, aiming at improved consistenc...

There has been an increase in the occurrence of sudden local flooding of great volume and short duration caused by heavy or excessive rainfall intensity over a small area, which presents the greatest potential danger threat to the natural environment, human life, public health and property, etc. Such flash floods have rapid runoff and debris flow that rises quickly with little or no advance war...

Despite improvements in preparedness, response, and recovery, the intensity of floods is increasing on a global scale. There is no way to fully prevent or mitigate against floods. Therefore, it is necessary to enhance the flood resilience of communities around the world. Due to differences in the location, topography, and socio-economic characteristics of communities, flood risk and resilience ...

A major flood in 1997 forced the evacuation of Grand Forks, North Dakota and caused damage of USD 1 billion. Despite this recent disaster there is only marginal evidence of an increase in disaster recovery planning by businesses that experienced the flood. This finding is consistent with the results of other business-related disaster research. Statistical tests of survey results from 2003 indic...