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4.3.    Floods occurrence

Through the ages and across Europe, damaging floods have been an ever-present peril to human settlements, and several studies have documented historical flood events in Europe going back several centuries (e.g. Brázdil, Kundzewicz, and Benito 2006; Bürger et al. 2006; Macdonald and Black 2010; Glaser et al. 2010). Most of the large-scale disastrous inland events have been caused by prolonged periods of heavy rainfall, often coinciding with ice-breaking or snow melt (Glaser et al. 2010). An important question for flood risk managers is to establish if the flood hazard has changed in recent decades. When discussing changes and trend in flooding it is important to distinguish between, on the one hand, changes in the occurrence of period of high river flood and (this section) and on the other hand, changes in economic damage resulting from inundation and destruction of infrastructure (section 5.2).