Managing Flood Risk: Innovative Approaches from Big Floodplain Rivers and Urban Streams

The past half century has seen an evolution in thinking from ‘flood control’ to ‘flood risk management’, recognizing that risk results from both hazard and vulnerability. Rather than rely only on engineering structures to reduce flood magnitude or extent, recent policies emphasize avoiding construction in flood-prone areas (or moving people from floodplains), reducing impacts on exposed populations through early warning systems, and insurance to aid in recovery. Implementing this new approach faces many challenges but also offers opportunities for synergies, as described in this book for a range of large floodplain rivers and smaller urban streams across North America and Europe. This book is unique in presenting the voices of those on the front lines of implementing a new paradigm in flood risk management, each river with a unique set of challenges and opportunities derived from its specific geography as well as differences in governance between the American and European contexts.   

Anna Serra-Llobet is Director of the Sustainable Floodplains Project at the Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley, USA and Research Fellow at the IMéRA Institut d’Etudes Avancées, Université Aix-Marseilles, France.

G. Mathias Kondolf is Professor of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning at the University California Berkeley, USA and EURIAS Research Fellow at Collegium - Lyon Institut d’Etudes Avancées, Université de Lyon, France.

Kathleen Schaefer is a Researcher at the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management, University of California, Berkeley, USA, and recently retired  from the post of Regional Engineer for Region IX of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Scott Nicholson is a Researcher at the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management, University of California, Berkeley, USA, and a Senior Policy Advisor and Analyst at the US Army Corps of Engineers, Washington DC.