Abstract
In recent years rising water levels, floods, and landslides following heavy precipitation have occurred with increasing frequency in Germany, in other European countries, as well as in many countries in all other continents. In particular during the past 10 years, severe flooding has devastated several large river basins (e.g., the Mississippi, The Rhine and Meuse, the Oder/Odra, the Yangtze) and thousands of lives have been lost in many countries including Bangla Desh, Czech Republic, China, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Poland, Somalia, South Africa. Also localised flash floods occurred in many parts of the globe causing loss of life, large damage and despair. Whether these floods are triggered or worsened by human activities has been the subject of a great deal of debate. Possible anthropogenic activities leading to increased flood risk include river regulation measures, intensified land use and forestry, and emissions of greenhouse gases causing a change in the global climate.
Following concern expressed by several Member States in the 1990's, the EC directorate General of Research and Development (DG XII) has initiated and/or funded a variety of activities in order to improve the scientific basis and to intensify knowledge transfer into practice concerning flood forecasting, risk mitigation, and the impact analysis of environmental change effects. After more then half a decade of research in this field, this conference is aimed to present the results achieved and to highlight the scientific advances. Besides the presentations of the EUROTAS-project results, the contributions are grouped into the following sub-sessions: impact of land use and climate on flooding, flood management and assessment of flood risk, catchment modelling and management systems, and impact of river engineering on flooding conditions.
The conference organisers would like to thank the EC, DG XII for the opportunity given to host such a interesting conference, the German Science Foundation (DFG), the International Hydrological Programme of UNESCO (IHP), the International Association for Hydrological Sciences (IAHS), and the University of Potsdam for supporting the conference, and - last but not least - all participants for presenting their results from recent flood research projects all over the globe.
