Special issue  

Despite significant efforts to reduce the risk from natural disasters, global flood losses have been sharply increasing in recent decades and floods remain the most destructive natural hazards in the world. In the light of continuously high flood losses, the projected increase in risk in many regions due to the effects of climate change and increases in exposure in risk-prone areas, integrated flood risk management concepts are increasingly being adopted in Europe and many other countries. These concepts take into account that flood defenses can fail and therefore complement traditional flood protection with additional policies that aim at alleviating potential flood impacts. This shifted focus towards the risk of flooding poses challenges for both scientific concepts to analyze and assess the diverse aspects of flood risk and its integrated management.

The objective of this special issue is to present current advances in the field of flood risk analysis and integrated flood risk management. Manuscripts included in this special issue address the various aspects of integrated flood risk analysis and could include topics such as methods to assess the risk of life, the vulnerability of buildings and their various elements to the use of flood damage data in risk assessments. Moreover, papers are invited that demonstrate how such methods can be used on various scales and in different geographical regions. In addition, contributions related to integrated flood risk management are invited, such as means to develop new partnership approaches in the changing risk management environment.

This special issue is organized in the aftermath of the 2nd European Conference on FLOODrisk management that was held in Rotterdam in November 2012 (http://www.floodrisk2012.net/).