From flood defence to flood management - Prerequisites for sustainable flood management

Floods are known from all ages. However as a result of the increasing habitation and development of flood prone areas, they have become major society disrupting disasters. The accompanying increase of assets make floods the most important natural hazard from economic damage point of view. Because of population growth this process will continue, probably aggravated by climatic change. For a sustainable prevention against floods, a comprehensive approach is needed, including Integrated Water Resources Management principles like multi-sectoral catchment approach and stakeholder involvement. This will decrease the flood frequency and magnitude and improve the quality of the solutions. In addition to this, an adequate strategy should be developed to cope with floods in the rare event when they occur. This strategy should be based on risk management concepts, including prevention, preparedness, response and recovery measures. The introduction of these new elements will generate new questions and will give a new impulse to research programmes. The ISFD3 reflects this new trend in several papers and will formulate recommendations for future research.