This book is an overview of current state of the art about monitoring of inundation events through remote sensing. A complete approach to efficient and precise flood monitoring requires multiple fields of expertise, from image processing to hydrologic monitoring. This volume details the latest remote sensing techniques for flood monitoring and mapping, including use of optical data from geostationary sensors and LEO spacecraft, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data analysis, and data fusion. Detailed case studies from a variety of subject experts illustrate these tools and techniques. Accurate monitoring of flood events is increasingly necessary to gain insight about both causes and remedies. Floods are one of the most destructive hazards to the human populations, they can occur practically everywhere on the Earth surface, and each year cause considerable harm and damage to infrastructures. The recent Flood directive in European Countries is contributing to a more quantitative approach to flood hazard and risk evaluation.

Flood risk management requires a multi-disciplinary approach with experts from the fields of health, town planning, civil engineering, computer science and mathematical statistics. This volume presents chapters highlighting the methodologies and tools developed to improve flood management and flood risk reduction. Chapters in this important volume consider research on Emerging economies and developing countries and the case studies are focused in Malaysia, China and South-East Asia. The book presents key research from areas of the globe where flood management has not traditionally been studied but where the effects of climate change and natural disasters present huge challenges for societies in the region. This volume, edited by leaders in the field of disaster management, would of be particular interest to students, researchers and policy specialists involved with examining flood related risk reduction methods and systems for key decision makers.

During the past years, Saudi Arabia has been affected by particularly severe torrential rains and floods. This book presents an in-depth and all-encompassing study on the floods that occurred in the Jeddah area in 2009 and 2011, including water-flow mechanisms, state-of-the-art techniques for flood assessment, flood control and appropriate management approaches. It highlights a number of methods and concepts that can be applied in similar areas in Saudi Arabia in order to reduce and mitigate the impact of torrential rains and floods.

This illustrated notebook highlights the need for a change of paradigm in current flood management practices, one that acknowledges the wide-ranging and interdisciplinary benefits brought by public space design. Reassessing and improving established flood management methods, public spaces are faced with a new and enhanced role as mediators of flood adaptation able to integrate infrastructure and communities together in the management of flood water as an ultimate resource for urban resilience. The book specifically introduces a path towards a new perspective on flood adaptation through public space design, stressing the importance of local, bottom up, approaches. Deriving from a solution-directed investigation, which is particularly attentive to design, the book offers a wide range of systematized conceptual solutions of flood adaptation measures applicable in the design of public spaces. Through a commonly used vocabulary and simple technical notions, the book facilitates and accelerates the initial brainstorm phases of a public space project with flood adaptation capacities, enabling a direct application in contemporary practice. Furthermore, it offers a significant sample of real-case examples that may further assist the decision-making throughout design processes. Overall, the book envisions to challenge established professionals, such as engineers, architects or urban planners, to work and design with uncertainty in an era of an unprecedented climate.

The very word "barrages" is evocative. In the context of tidal waters it conjures up pictures of massive structures and environmental change. Barrages represent the engineer?s success where King Canute failed ? to stop the tide coming in. They are hardly a new concept as man has for centuries tried to harness tidal power to drive his machinery, but a new breed of barrage is emerging, aimed at regenerating depressed urban areas. One of the primary aims of such schemes has been to drown "unsightly" mud flats. If you happen to be a wading bird used to enjoying the worms that live in intertidal mud flats you may not share that perspective. Indeed, many people today tend to side with the birds, fish and other ecological wonders and often find themselves in conflict with the promoters of a barrage scheme. How far are their fears justified? Are the negative impacts as bad as some people have predicted or even worse? How accurately can the impacts be predicted by scientific methods? Can the barrage be designed and its operation controlled to mitigate any negative effects as well as to optimise its primary objective? These issues are addressed in this book by authors drawing on their experience of research and practical experience.

Flood damages are increasing as a result of frequent occurrence of large floods in many parts of the world, existing and continuing encroachment of development onto flood plains and aging flood protection structures. Under such circumstances, there is an ongoing search for better ways of protecting human life, land, property and the environment by improved flood management. Many flood management measures have been practiced in various jurisdictions, including living with floods, non-structural measures (e.g. regulations, flood defence by flood forecasting and warning, evacuations, and flood insurance), and structural measures (e.g., land drainage modifications, reservoirs, dykes and polders). Such flood management is difficult in river basins controlled by a single authority, and becomes even more challenging when dealing with transboundary floods, which may originate in one country or jurisdiction and then propagate downstream to another country, or jurisdiction.

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.

Modelling urban flood dynamics requires proper handling of a number of complex urban features. Although high-resolution topographic data can nowadays be obtained from aerial LiDAR surveys, such top-view LiDAR data still have difficulties to represent some key components of urban features. Incorrectly representing features like underpasses through buildings or apparent blockage of flow by sky trains may lead to misrepresentation of actual flood propagation, which could easily result in inadequate flood-protection measures. Hence proper handling of urban features plays an important role in enhancing urban flood modelling. This research explores present-day capabilities of using computer-based environments to merge side-view Structure-from-Motion data acquisition with top-view LiDAR data to create a novel multi-source views (MSV) topographic representation for enhancing 2D model schematizations. A new MSV topographic data environment was explored for the city of Delft and compared with the conventional top-view LiDAR approach. Based on the experience gained, the effects of different topographic descriptions were explored for 2D urban flood models of (i) Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for the 2003 flood event; and (ii) Ayutthaya, Thailand for the 2011 flood event. It was observed that adopting the new MSV data as the basis for describing the urban topography, the numerical simulations provide a more realistic representation of complex urban flood dynamics, thus enhancing conventional approaches and revealing specific features like flood watermarks identification and helping to develop improved flood-protection measures.

The Ning-Meng reach of the Yellow River basin is located in the Inner Mongolia region at the Northern part of the Yellow River. Due to the special geographical conditions, the river flow direction is towards the North causing the Ning-Meng reach to freeze up every year in wintertime. Both during the freeze-up and break-up period, unfavourable conditions occur which may cause ice jamming and ice dam formation leading to dike breaching and overtopping of the embankment. Throughout history this has often led to considerable casualties and property loss. Enhanced economic development and human activities in the region have altered the characteristics of the ice regime in recent decades, leading to several ice disasters during freezing or breaking-up periods. The integrated water resources management plan developed by the Yellow River Conservancy Commission (YRCC) outlines the requirements for water regulation in the upper Yellow River during ice flood periods. YRCC is developing measures that not only safeguard against ice floods, but also assure the availability of adequate water resources. These provide the overall requirements for developing an ice regime forecasting system including lead-time prediction and required accuracy. In order to develop such a system, numerical modelling of ice floods is an essential component of current research at the YRCC, together with field observations and laboratory experiments. In order to properly model river ice processes it is necessary to adjust the hydrodynamic equations to account for thermodynamic effects. In this research, hydrological and meteorological data from 1950 to 2010 were used to analyse the characteristics of ice regimes in the past. Also, additional field observations were carried out for ice flood model calibration and validation. By combining meteorological forecasting models with statistical models, a medium to short range air temperature forecasting model for the Ning-Meng reach was established. These results were used to improve ice formation modelling and prolong lead-time prediction. The numerical ice flood model developed in this thesis for the Ning-Meng reach allows better forecasting of the ice regime and improved decision support for upstream reservoir regulation and taking appropriate measures for disaster risk reduction.

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

Read a free excerpt here! American engineers have done astounding things to bend the Mississippi River to their will: forcing one of its tributaries to flow uphill, transforming over a thousand miles of roiling currents into a placid staircase of water, and wresting the lower half of the river apart from its floodplain. American law has aided and abetted these feats. But despite our best efforts, so-called "natural disasters" continue to strike the Mississippi basin, as raging floodwaters decimate waterfront communities and abandoned towns literally crumble into the Gulf of Mexico. In some places, only the tombstones remain, leaning at odd angles as the underlying soil erodes away. Mississippi River Tragedies reveals that it is seductively deceptive-but horribly misleading-to call such catastrophes "natural." Authors Christine A. Klein and Sandra B. Zellmer present a sympathetic account of the human dreams, pride, and foibles that got us to this point, weaving together engaging historical narratives and accessible law stories drawn from actual courtroom dramas. The authors deftly uncover the larger story of how the law reflects and even amplifies our ambivalent attitude toward nature-simultaneously revering wild rivers and places for what they are, while working feverishly to change them into something else. Despite their sobering revelations, the authors' final message is one of hope. Although the acknowledgement of human responsibility for unnatural disasters can lead to blame, guilt, and liability, it can also prod us to confront the consequences of our actions, leading to a liberating sense of possibility and to the knowledge necessary to avoid future disasters.

In the past thirty years, knowledge on flooding has greatly increased by moving away from purely hydrological and hydraulic science and opening up to other disciplines such as economics or human and geographical sciences. It is as part of this multidisciplinary approach that this book proposes a review of current knowledge on flood risk. It starts with the ever-increasing impact of flooding in order to conceptualize and understand the constituents of risk. Although risk knowledge in modeling methods or naturalist approaches remains essential, it is further developed by the fields of economics, human sciences, geography, environmental psychology and history. This integrated approach to flood risk contextualizes current conclusions on the eventual effects of climate change by showing that human factors are of paramount importance in understanding the process of "risk production".

The management of flood risk seems to be facing a daunting paradox. Despite increasingly effective risk knowledge tools and the efforts of international institutions to place risk reduction at the top of the agenda, the cost of disasters continues to increase. It is also increasingly difficult to avoid the urbanization or development of potential flood zones. The fundamental issue involves determining the conditions necessary for efficient prevention by focusing on adaptability to risk, which implies coping with the risk of flooding rather than directly fighting against it or simply ignoring it. This second volume of the Floods series of books explores existing policies and tools which mitigate the impact of flooding: the construction of protective structures, the reduction of vulnerability, land use planning, the improvement of crisis management, etc. The closing chapters focus on the question of adaptation through post-flood reconstruction, integrating disaster risk reduction measures, e.g. through resilient urbanism.

The magnitude and urgency of the need to adapt to climate change is such that addressing it has been taken up by the United Nations as one of the sustainable development goals - Goal 13 (SDG13) in 2015. SDG13 emphasises the need to strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate related hazards and natural disasters. Coping with urban floods is one of the major needs of climate adaptation, where integration of climate change responses into flood risk management policies, strategies and planning at international, national, regional and local levels is now the norm. However, much of this integration lacks effectiveness or real commitment from stakeholders involved in adaptation planning and implementation. Hence this research has focused on integrating flexibility based adaptation responses into an urban flood risk management context. The research has synthesised flexible adaptation practices from several disciplines including information technology, automobile and aerospace manufacturing. The outcomes of the research are brought together in a framework for structuring local adaptation responses and an adaptation planning process based on flexibility concepts. The outcomes provide a way to assist with the identification of the appropriate nature and type of flexibility required; where flexibility can best be incorporated; and when is the most appropriate time to implement the flexible adaptation responses in the context of urban flooding.

In recent years, the continued technological advances have led to the spread of low-cost sensors and devices supporting crowdsourcing as a way to obtain observations of hydrological variables in a more distributed way than the classic static physical sensors. The main advantage of using these type of sensors is that they can be used not only by technicians but also by regular citizens. However, due to their relatively low reliability and varying accuracy in time and space, crowdsourced observations have not been widely integrated in hydrological and/or hydraulic models for flood forecasting applications. Instead, they have generally been used to validate model results against observations, in post-event analyses. This research aims to investigate the benefits of assimilating the crowdsourced observations, coming from a distributed network of heterogeneous physical and social (static and dynamic) sensors, within hydrological and hydraulic models, in order to improve flood forecasting. The results of this study demonstrate that crowdsourced observations can significantly improve flood prediction if properly integrated in hydrological and hydraulic models. This study provides technological support to citizen observatories of water, in which citizens not only can play an active role in information capturing, evaluation and communication, leading to improved model forecasts and better flood management.

The First Conference on Engineering Probability in Flood Defense was orga nized by the Department of Mathematics and Informatics of the Delft U niver sity of Technology and the Department of Industrial Engineering and Opera tions Research of the University of California at Berkeley, and was held on June 1,2 1995 in Delft. Groups at Berkeley and Delft were both deeply engaged in modeling deterioration in civil structures, particularly flood defense structures. The plans for the conference were well under way when the dramatic floods in The Netherlands and California in the winter of 1994-1995 focused world attention on these problems. The design of civil engineering structures and systems is essentially an example of decision making under uncertainty. Although the decision making part of the process is generally acknowledged, the uncertainty in variables and param eters in the design problem is less frequently recognized. In many practical design procedures the uncertainty is concealed behind sharp probabilistic de sign targets like 'once in a thousand years' combined with a standardized use of safety factors. The choice of these probabilistic design targets, however, is based on an assessment of the uncertainty of the variable under consideration, and on its assessed importance. The value of the safety factor is governed by similar considerations. Standard practice is simply accu ulated experience and engineering judgment. In light of the great number of civil engineering structures that function suc-. cessfully, one may say that this standard practice has proven itself broadly satisfactory."

Stakeholders' lack of awareness, involvement and participation in the planning and management of water resources and flood risk often creates problems in the acceptance and implementation of proposed measures. Interactions among stakeholders and decision makers build awareness, trust, enhance cooperation and negotiation for best possible measures. The main challenge in stakeholder participation is maintaining the participatory process. Stakeholders' spatial distribution, limitation of financial resources and diverse stakeholders' interest (even opposed) are some of the hindrances in maintaining the participatory process. Addressing these challenges and hindrances, this research developed and implemented three frameworks for developing "Networked Environments for Stakeholder Participation" (NESPs). Networked environments are web-based computer-aided or mobile environments for remote virtual interaction between participating entities such as stakeholders. NESPs are envisioned to enable stakeholder participation by providing sharing of information, planning, negotiating and decision support. NESPs were implemented in five real case studies (1) Lakes of Noord-Brabant, The Netherlands, (2) Danube river (Braila-Isaccea section), Romania, (3) Somes Mare catchment, Romania, (4) Cranbrook catchment, London and (5) Alster catchment, Hamburg, Germany. The overall results of the research show that networked environments can address the challenges and hindrances in stakeholder participation and enhance participation in water resources and flood management.

This volume provides an introduction for flood risk management practitioners, up-to-date methods for analysis of uncertainty and its use in risk-based decision making. It addresses decision making for both short term (real-time forecasting) and long term (flood risk planning under change) situations. It aims primarily at technical practitioners involved in flood risk analysis and flood warning, including hydrologists, engineers, flood modelers, risk analysts and those involved in the design and operation of flood warning systems. Many experienced practitioners are now expected to modify their way of working to fit into the new philosophy of flood risk management. This volume helps them to undertake that task with appropriate attention to the surrounding uncertainties. The book will also interest and benefit researchers and graduate students hoping to improve their knowledge of modern uncertainty analysis.

This book assesses and illustrates innovative and practical world-wide measures for combating sea level rise from the profession of landscape architecture. The work explores how the appropriate mixture of integrated, multi-scalar flood protection mechanisms can reduce risks associated with flood events including sea level rise. Because sea level rise is a global issue, illustrative case studies performed from the United States, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Japan, China, and the Netherlands identify the structural (engineered), non-structural (nature-based), and hybrid mechanisms (mixed) used to combat sea level rise and increase flood resilience. The alternative flood risk reduction mechanisms are extracted and analyzed from each case study to develop and explain a set of design-based typologies to combat sea level rise which can then be applied to help proctor new and existing communities. It is important for those located within the current or future floodplain considering sea level rise and those responsible for land use, developmental, and population-related activities within these areas to strategically implement a series of integrated constructed and green infrastructure-based flood risk reduction mechanisms to adequately protect threatened areas. As a result, this book is beneficial to both academics and practitioners related to multiple design professions such as urban designers, urban planners, architects, real estate developers, and landscape architects.

Alluvial fans are ubiquitous geomorphological features that occur throughout the world, regardless of climate, at the front of mountains as the result of erosion and deposition. They are more prominent in semi- and arid climates simply because of the lack of vegetative cover that masks their fan shapes in more humid areas. From both engineering and geological viewpoints, alluvial fans present particular fluvial and sedimentation hazards in semi- and arid regions because episodic rainfall-runoff events can result in debris, mud, and fluvial flows through complex and, in some cases, migratory channel systems. Further, in semi- and arid climates alluvial fans often end in terminal or playa lakes. Given the uniform topography of playa lakes, these features often present ideal locations for facilities such as airports; however, regardless of the engineering advantages of the topography, the episodic and often long-term flooding of these lakes attracts migratory birds. The purpose of this volume is to summarize the current state-of-the-art, from the viewpoint of engineering, in the identification and mitigation of flood hazard on alluvial fans; and to accomplish this a fundamental understanding of geology is required.

Like so many of the coastal cities in Southeast Asia (and other regions) established during European colonialism, there has been an ongoing challenge for decades dealing with the growing frequency and intensity of flooding. Jakarta's flood problems since the 1990s have been nothing less than monumental and the inability of the local and national governments to mitigate flooding in Jakarta is the most visible manifestation of fundamental water management deficiencies. This book offers a comprehensive and systematic historical assessment of Jakarta's water management practices from the colonial era through the early years of the Indonesian republic and Jakarta's emergence as a sprawling megacity. This book draws upon a vast multidisciplinary literature and a wide array of government documents to unravel the complex history of water management that has led to approximately 40% of the city now lying below sea level. This book will be a useful reference to those who research on topics such as urbanization in Southeast Asia, sustainable development, urban and planning history, environmental planning, issues of water management (and flooding), and the politics of planning and development.

Flooding accounts for one-third of natural disasters worldwide and for over half the deaths that occur as a result of natural disasters. As the frequency and volume of flooding increases, due to climate change, there is a new urgency amongst researchers and professionals working in flood risk management. River Basin Modelling for Flood Risk Mitigation brings together thirty edited papers by leading experts who gathered for the European Union's Advanced Study Course at the University of Birmingham, UK. In this book, coverage ranges in scope from issues concerning the protection of life to river restoration and wetland management. Eminent experts examine a variety of topics, including climate change, hydroinformatics, hydrometeorology, river flow forecasting systems, and dam-break modeling. They also explore risk and uncertainty issues for flood management, the social and economic impacts of flooding, and developments in flood forecasting and early warning systems. Case studies illustrate the concepts and methods presented throughout the text. With broad yet integrated coverage, River Basin Modelling for Flood Risk Mitigation is an informative and accessible reference tool for professional engineers involved with flood risk management.

Breakwaters and closure dams belong to the most spectacular hydraulic structures. They are exposed to the most severe loading by waves and currents, either during their construction, or during their life cycle.
Design and construction of these structures are so vitally interrelated that a proper understanding requires a thorough knowledge of the theory and a proper understanding of practical matters.
This book offers an essential, integrated combination of theory and practice to the graduate student. Beginning with a description of the functional requirements, it discusses the relevant theory and shows the application of experience and theoretical knowledge to the design.

This book delivers a wealth of information on changes in flood risk in Europe, and considers causes for change. The temporal coverage is mostly focused on post-1900 events, reflecting the typical availability of data, but some information on earlier flood events is also included.

This book provides an overview of flood and drought in the Lower Mekong Basin, reviews the characteristics of flood and drought, and details structural and non-structural measures for flood and drought mitigation employed in the basin countries, as well as their flood and drought mitigation capacity. Given its scope, the book offers a valuable resource for researchers and engineers in the field of transboundary rivers, especially those with an interest in the Lower Mekong River.