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4.3.2.      Future floods

Flood risk management needs to consider developments in both flood hazard and vulnerability. Scenarios for flood risk management thus have to combine socio-economic scenarios, such as projections for population growth, urbanisation and industrial developments with projections of future hazards resulting from a changing climate and hydrology. Recent studies (e.g. Dankers and Feyen 2009; Feyen et al. 2011) suggest that climate change can add significantly to expected damages in some parts of Europe over the coming decades. The scenarios of changes in flood hazard were combined with projections of socio-economic change. The results showed that the combination of climate change and economic growth will likely result in a strong increase in flood risks across Europe (Flörke et al. 2011). The ClimWatAdapt project focused on floods with an annual exceedance probability of 1% (equivalent to the predicted 100-year flood). The future scenarios showed that the occurrence of a 100-year flood event is strongly affected by climate change. However, the uncertainty related to the spatial distribution is still large, and different climate models gave very different results. Using the ensemble mean, the 100-year flood was projected to increase, especially in the north-western part of Europe and on the Iberian Peninsula (see also EEA (report under preparation) 2012b, section 3.3.3). Flash floods and urban floods, which are triggered by local intense precipitation events, are also likely to become more frequent throughout Europe (Christensen and Christensen 2002; Kundzewicz, Radziejewski, and Pínskwar 2006).

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  • mohssine.elkahloun@mow.vlaanderen.be (invited by Wouter Vanneuville) 24 Aug 2012 09:45:31

    Scenarios for flood risk management thus have to combine socio-economic and environmental scenarios

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