Human settlements have grown near watercourses since ancient times. Water supply, irrigation, navigation, wastewater conveyance and city defense are some of the uses that were responsible for this choice. Even floods played an important role, favoring the soil fertilization. Man-made actions, however, especially in urban watersheds, significantly modify the natural water cycle, increasing the magnitude of floods and their potential damages. Consequently, flood damages are one of the most important issues to be dealt with in the present days. Several different studies show that floods are one of the most important natural hazards, with several losses, both in terms of lives and money. Particularly in urban areas, the amplification of floods may cause important economic losses and lead to critical social risks to the cities and their population, when inundation reaches the built environment. This situation is becoming more frequent each day. Recent history shows that urbanization is an inevitable trend and, today, the most part of the world population lives in cities. It is difficult, however, to adequately manage urban flood problems, because flood risk and flood costs are not easy to quantify. Traditionally, flood risk and flood cost assessments face difficulties due to the subjective nature of these evaluations and to the inexistence of standardized methodologies.This book tries to show different techniques and approaches to help in treating flood problems. Chapters 1 and 2 show simplified mathematical modeling of floods and results of multifunctional landscape flood control measures in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The remaining book chapters present remedial works against debris after floods in Venezuela and Measures for Mitigation of Flood areas in Japan. There are also presented studies related with Flood Risk Assessment and Management in Mediterranean Basins. The final chapter shows an interesting study related to the attitudes of residents in the Tokyo Bay area toward flood hazards.

Primarily written as course material on flood control and drainage engineering for advanced students of civil engineering, this third edition is thoroughly revised. It accommodates recent developments in remote sensing, information technology and GIS technology. New additional material deals with problems of flood forecasting, flood plain prioritization and flood hazard zoning, and engineering measures for flood control. Drainage improvement is tackled, with particular regard to salinity and coastal aquifer management from the ingress of sea water. The book includes design problem-solving and case studies, making it practical and applications-oriented. The subject matter will be of considerable interest to civil engineers, agricultural engineers, architects and town planners, as well as other government and non-government organizations

The United States has one of the largest and costliest flood control systems in the world, even though only a small proportion of its land lies in floodplains. Rivers by Design traces the emergence of the mammoth U.S. flood management system, which is overseen by the federal government but implemented in conjunction with state governments and local contractors and levee districts. Karen M. O’Neill analyzes the social origins of the flood control program, showing how the system initially developed as a response to the demands of farmers and the business elite in outlying territories. The configuration of the current system continues to reflect decisions made in the nineteenth century and early twentieth. It favors economic development at the expense of environmental concerns. O’Neill focuses on the creation of flood control programs along the lower Mississippi River and the Sacramento River, the first two rivers to receive federal flood control aid. She describes how, in the early to mid-nineteenth century, planters, shippers, and merchants from both regions campaigned for federal assistance with flood control efforts. She explains how the federal government was slowly and reluctantly drawn into water management to the extent that, over time, nearly every river in the United States was reengineered. Her narrative culminates in the passage of the national Flood Control Act of 1936, which empowered the Army Corps of Engineers to build projects for all navigable rivers in conjunction with local authorities, effectively ending nationwide, comprehensive planning for the protection of water resources.

DIVA sociological history of flood control politics that examines how local and regional pro-growth interests organized to press the federal government to protect land from flooding, and how this action altered the relationship between regions and the federa/div

The loss of life and devastation in the Gulf coast region of the United States following the hurricane season of 2005 has led to considerable debate about what should be done and not done in recovering from the damage and mitigating the consequences of future floods. this document reports the experiences of four major floods since 1948 (two in the United States, one in the Netherlands, and one in China), to draw lessons for the Gulf coast restoration effort. The authors conclude that (1) attending to history leads to mitigating the potential damage of floods even when major floods are few and far between; (2) the critical concept of integrated water resource management policy -- particularly its implication that flood damage control includes conceding land to the water from time to time -- is necessary but may be difficult to accept; (3) delineating roles and responsibilities clearly in advance produces better outcomes; and (4) out of disaster can come improvements to the social and physical infrastructure that go beyond flood protection.