Flood Risk Management: Global Case Studies of Governance, Policy and Communities (Earthscan Water Text)

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.

Edmund C. Penning-Rowsell is Professor of Geography and Pro Vice-Chancellor at Middlesex University, where he founded the Flood Hazard Research Centre in 1970. Since 2010 he has been a Visiting Academic at the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford. He is also the editor of the journal Environmental Hazards (Taylor & Francis).

Matilda Becker is a DPhil researcher at the School of Geography and Environment, University of Oxford. Her research centres on legal geographies of mineral exploration in the Canadian Arctic. Matilda previously worked as a research assistant on a public engagement project for flood risk management in Yorkshire, England. She graduated from the University of Oxford with an MSc in Water Science, Policy and Management.