Work

Use of documentary sources on past flood events for flood risk management and land planning

Year: 2008

Type: article

Abstract: The knowledge of past catastrophic events can improve flood risk mitigation policy, with a better awareness against risk. As such historical information is usually available in Europe for the past five centuries, historians are able to understand how past society dealt with flood risk, and hydrologists can include information on past floods into an adapted probabilistic framework. In France, Flood Risk Mitigation Maps are based either on the largest historical known flood event or on the 100-year flood event if it is greater. Two actions can be suggested in terms of promoting the use of historical information for flood risk management: (1) the development of a regional flood data base, with both historical and current data, in order to get a good feedback on recent events and to improve the flood risk education and awareness; (2) the commitment to keep a persistent/perennial management of a reference network of hydrometeorological observations for climate change studies.

Source: Comptes Rendus Géoscience

DOI: 10.1016/j.crte.2008.03.001

Authors: Denis Cœur, Michel Lang

Institutions: Institut National de Recherche pour l'Agriculture, l'Alimentation et l'Environnement, Institut National de Recherche en Sciences et Technologies pour l'Environnement et l'Agriculture

Language: English

Topic: Flood Risk Assessment and Management

Subfield: Global and Planetary Change

Field: Environmental Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDG: Climate action

Open Access status: bronze

OpenAlex ID: W1968005129