The operation of flood retarding areas does not attract much attention, although they are important components of flood control systems. Poor operation of such areas restricts not only the socio-economic development of the flood retarding area, but also limits scientific flood control options. As the second-largest flood retarding area in China, with more than 2000 km2 and 300 polders, the Hong...

Social pressure on alluvial plains and deltas is large, both from an economic point of view and from a nature conservation point of view. Gradually, flood risks increase with economic development, because the expected damage increases, and with higher dikes, because the flooding depth increases. Global change, changing social desires, but also changing views, require a revision of flood-risk ma...

Flood and drought occur almost every year in China, but heavy floor and drought take place every several years or in successive years. We can say that the five thousand year civilization history of China is the history that the laboring people have been fighting against floods and droughts. Reduction of grain production caused by droughts is a slow process since crops become withered because of...

Recent flood-related disasters (Japan, Thailand, US, Australia) emphasize the need for an effective management of flood risks. As an introduction to this special issue, this editorial summarizes some of the key challenges in the field. Flood risk management needs to recognize the interconnections between infrastructures, economic systems and the role of human factors in assessing and managing 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...

This paper presents the findings of an analysis of flood disaster trends in Asian countries during the last 30 years. The analysis was carried out to understand the changing characteristics of flood disasters in Asian countries in the past three decades with the rapid changes in socio-economic conditions. The second half of the paper presents the results of a modeling study of flood risk manage...

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 ...

Flood disaster mitigation strategies should be based on a comprehensive assessment of the flood risk combined with a thorough investigation of the uncertainties associated with the risk assessment procedure. Within the “German Research Network of Natural Disasters” (DFNK) the working group “Flood Risk Analysis” investigated the flood process chain from precipitation, runoff generation and conce...

Flood disaster mitigation strategies should be based on a comprehensive assessment of the flood risk combined with a thorough investigation of the uncertainties associated with the risk assessment procedure. Within the ‘German Research Network of Natural Disasters’ (DFNK) the working group ‘Flood Risk Analysis’ investigated the flood process chain from precipitation, runoff generation and conce...