A flooding river is very hard to stop. Many residents of the United States have discovered this the hard way. Right now, over five million Americans hold flood insurance policies from the National Flood Insurance Program, which estimates that flooding causes at least six billion dollars in damages every year. Like rivers after a rainstorm, the financial costs are rising along with the toll on residents. And the worst is probably yet to come. Most scientists believe that global climate change will result in increases in flooding. The authors of this book present a straightforward argument: the time to stop a flooding rivers is before is before it floods. Floodplain Management outlines a new paradigm for flood management, one that emphasizes cost-effective, long-term success by integrating physical, chemical, and biological systems with our societal capabilities. It describes our present flood management practices, which are often based on dam or levee projects that do not incorporate the latest understandings about river processes. And it suggests that a better solution is to work with the natural tendencies of the river: retreat from the floodplain by preventing future development (and sometimes even removing existing structures); accommodate the effects of floodwaters with building practices; and protect assets with nonstructural measures if possible, and with large structural projects only if absolutely necessary.

This volume provides a comprehensive perspective on geomorphic approaches to management of lowland alluvial rivers in North America and Europe. Many lowland rivers have been heavily managed for flood control and navigation for decades or centuries, resulting in engineered channels and embanked floodplains with substantially altered sediment loads and geomorphic processes. Over the past decade, floodplain management of many lowland rivers has taken on new importance because of concerns about the potential for global environmental change to alter floodplain processes, necessitating revised management strategies that minimize flood risk while enhancing environmental attributes of floodplains influenced by local embankments and upstream dams. Recognition of the failure of old perspectives on river management and the need to enhance environmental sustainability has stimulated a new approach to river management. The manner that river restoration and integrated management are implemented, however, requires a case study approach that takes into account the impact of historic human impacts to the system, especially engineering. The river basins examined in this volume provide a representative coverage of the drainage of North America and Europe, taking into account a range of climatic and physiographic provinces. They include the 1) Sacramento (California, USA), 2) San Joaquin (California), 3) Missouri (Missouri, USA), 4) Red (Manitoba, Canada and Minnesota, USA), 5) Mississippi (Louisiana, USA), 6) Kissimmee (Florida, USA), 7) Ebro (Spain), 8) Rhone (France), 9) Rhine (Netherlands), 10) Danube (Romania), and 11) Volga (Russian Federation) Rivers. The case studies covered in these chapters span a range of fluvial modes of adjustment, including sediment, channel, hydrologic regime, floodplains, as well as ecosystem and environmental associations.

This volume presents chapters highlighting the methodologies and tools developed to improve flood management and flood risk reduction.

Flood risk management policy across the European Union is changing, partly in response to the EU Floods Directive and partly because of new scientific approaches and research findings. It involves a move towards comprehensive flood risk management, which requires bringing the following fields/domains closer together: the natural sciences, social sc

Approaches to avoid loss of life and limit disruption and damage from flooding have changed significantly in recent years. Worldwide, there has been a move from a strategy of flood defence to one of flood risk management. Flood risk management includes flood prevention using hard defences, where appropriate, but also requires that society learns to live with floods and that stakeholders living in flood prone areas develop coping strategies to increase their resilience to flood impacts when these occur. This change in approach represents a paradigm shift which stems from the realisation that continuing to strengthen and extend conventional flood defences is unsustainable economically, environmentally, and in terms of social equity. Flood risk management recognises that a sustainable approach must rest on integrated measures that reduce not only the probability of flooding, but also the consequences. This is essential as increases in the probability of inundation are inevitable in many areas of the world due to climate change, while socio-economic development will lead to spiralling increases in the consequences of flooding unless land use in floodplains is carefully planned. Flood Risk Science and Management provides an extensive and comprehensive synthesis of current research in flood management; providing a multi-disciplinary reference text covering a wide range of flood management topics. Its targeted readership is the international research community (from research students through to senior staff) and flood management professionals, such as engineers, planners, government officials and those with flood management responsibility in the public sector. By using the concept of case study chapters, international coverage is given to the topic, ensuring a world-wide relevance.

Our changing climate and more extreme weather events have dramatically increased the number and severity of floods across the world. Demonstrating the diversity of global flood risk management (FRM), this volume covers a range of topics including planning and policy, risk governance and communication, forecasting and warning, and economics. Through short case studies, the range of international examples from North America, Europe, Asia and Africa provide analysis of FRM efforts, processes and issues from human, governance and policy implementation perspectives. Written by an international set of authors, this collection of chapters and case studies will allow the reader to see how floods and flood risk management is experienced in different regions of the world. The way in which institutions manage flood risk is discussed, introducing the notions of realities and social constructions when it comes to risk management. The book will be of great interest to students and professionals of flood, coastal, river and natural hazard management, as well as risk analysis and insurance, demonstrating multiple academic frameworks of analysis and their utility and drawbacks when applied to real-life FRM contexts.