Journal of Hydrology 267 (2002) 1
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Preface
Special Issue ªAdvances in Flood Researchº
In recent years rising water levels, ¯oods, and landslides following heavy precipitation have occurred with increasing frequency in many European countries, as well as in many countries in all other continents. A trend of increasing economic losses due to extreme ¯ood events is observed. In particular during the last decade, severe ¯ooding has devastated several large river basins (e.g. the Mississippi, The Rhine and Meuse, the Oder/Odra, the Zambezi, the Yangtze). Also localised ¯ash ¯oods occurred in many parts of the globe causing loss of life, great damage and despair. Thousands of lives have been lost in many countries including Bangladesh, the Czech Republic, China, England, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Poland, Somalia, South Africa, and Venezuela. Whether these ¯oods are triggered or worsened by human activities has been the subject of a great deal of debate. Possible anthropogenic activities leading to increased ¯ood risk include river regulation measures, an altered land-use and/or a changed land-cover, and anthropogenically caused changes in our climate system. Following concern expressed by several Member States in the 1990s, the European Commission's Directorate General of Research and Development has initiated and funded a variety of activities in order to improve the scienti®c basis and to intensify knowledge transfer into practice concerning ¯ood forecasting, risk mitigation, and the impact analysis of environmental change effects. As an outcome of these various research projects, the international conference on 'Advances in Flood Research' was organised in Potsdam, Germany, in November 2000. The conference aimed to present novel research results and to highlight the scienti®c advances and interdisciplinary crosslinks in the research areas of
¯ood generation in¯uenced by changing environmental conditions and of ¯ood risk management. This special issue Advances in Flood Research contains an ensemble of 10 articles documenting original and novel research results in the particular research areas mentioned above. They have been chosen for publication in Journal of Hydrology from more than 80 conference contributions. These articles contribute to the following general themes: ¯ood risk management, coupling of precipitation models and rainfall estimates with rainfall±runoff models, impact of changes in climate conditions, land use and land cover on river ¯oods, and impact of river regulation measures on ¯ooding conditions. Many thanks are due to all contributors to this special issue and to the large number of very experienced scientists who assisted in the review process. The guest editors also sincerely wish to express thanks to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Science Council), DFG, and the International Hydrological Programme of UNESCO, IHP, for their very important ®nancial support of the conference. A. Bronstert 1,* Institute for Geo-Ecology, University of Potsdam, P.O. Box 601553, 14415 Potsdam, Germany E-mail address:
[email protected] Lucas Menzel 1 Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, P.O. Box 601203, 14412 Potsdam, Germany * Corresponding author. Tel.: 149-3319772548; fax: 1493319772092. 1 Guest editors, Journal of Hydrology.
0022-1694/02/$ - see front matter q 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: S 0022-169 4(02)00134-8
