Table of contents
- 0. Flood Risk - general comments
- 1. Executive summary
- 2. Introduction
- 2.1 Floods in Europe
- 2.2 Environmental aspects of floods and floodplains
- 2.3 Floodplain areas areas
- 2.4 Strategic flood risk management
- 2.5 Outline and reading guidance
- 3 Status of Europe's floodplains
- 3.1 Environmental importance of floodplains
- 3.2 Status of Europe’s floodplains: remaining areas and environmental quality
- 3.3 Anthropogenic Drivers and Pressures
- 3.4 Floodplain management and restoration
- 4 Policy developments and implementation
- 4.1 European policies influencing the management of floods and floodplains
- 4.2 Flood risk management, climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction
- 4.3 Gaps in knowledge and policy integration
- 5 Conclusions
- 5.1 Data on floods and floodplains
- 5.2 Floodplains in Europe
- 5.3 Coordination of flood risk management with adjacent policy fields
- Acronyms and abbreviations
- References
2.1 Floods in Europe
2.1 Floods in Europe
Across Europe and throughout the ages floods have affected human health ([1]), the environment, cultural heritage and economic activities. The United Kingdom and Ireland floods from April 2012 onwards were caused by a series of weather events that lasted on through the winter of 2013. Central Europe was hit by extreme floods in May and June 2013 affecting both Elbe and Danube catchments. On many locations, these floods caused the highest water levels and/or discharges ever recorded (BfG 2013; Gierk, 2013; ICPDR 2014). Although the damage was still significant, the measures taken e.g. in Austria after the 2002 floods proved to be highly effective (Neuhold, 2013).
In May 2014, a low-pressure cyclone affected a large area of southeast and central Europe, causing floods and landslides, e.g. along the Sava river. Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina suffered the greatest damage. In Serbia only already over 50 fatalities were counted, roughly 32 000 people were evacuated, and over 1.5 million people were affected (Pavlović, 2014).
After a flood event, different numbers are circulating about the damages and people affected. However, a consistent database of the impacts of past floods is not available for Europe (EEA, 2011). Overviews of flooding on a European scale and its impacts were extracted from global disaster databases. Nevertheless, information on past flood events is the basis for a sound understanding of flood generating processes across Europe and for reliable predictions of future flood changes. Therefore the development of a comprehensive publicly available database of flood events and their impacts in Europe is desirable (EEA, 2011).
Based on the information on past floods reported by EU Member States in the Preliminary Flood Risk Assessment (PFRA) under the Floods Directive (EU 2007, Art. 4) and complemented by data from global databases like EM-DAT (EM-DAT 2015) or Dartmouth Flood Observatory (DFO) (Brakenridge, 2015), such an EU overview of significant flood and their impact is now available for the 39 EEA member countries and cooperating countries ([2]). More details can be found in Box 2.1
[2] http://www.eea.europa.eu/about-us/countries-and-eionet
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Box 2.1 European Flood Impact Database A European Flood Impact Database (EFID) was not available so far. In most European countries, national databases for natural hazards were available but they were very different in terms of type of hazards included, information on impacts, thresholds to include events, availability of the detailed data etc. (Mysiak et al., 2013). The amount of information available increased significantly after the reporting of the PFRA (mainly on the impacts, although often not quantified or expressed in monetary terms) and the information was better structured due to the template imposed by the Floods Directive reporting schemas. Nevertheless the PFRA reporting in itself is insufficient to act as the single database on European floods and flood impacts (Kjeldsen et al., 2013). In addition, floods are not bound to administrative boundaries and e.g. no information was available about non-EU European countries. Therefore, a list of significant floods since 1980 as defined by the countries and selected attributes on hazard and impact were prefilled based on the PFRA reporting and global natural disaster database. A country consultation for corrections and additions ran from February until May 2015. The resulting database, where also environmental impacts and impacts on cultural heritage are included where available besides fatalities and economic damage, is available at: http://forum.eionet.europa.eu/nrc-eionet-freshwater/library/country-review-european-floods-impact-database-2015 (*). Results are discussed in Section 4.1 of this report. (*) link to be replaced by reference to water data centre once data are available |
Given the importance of natural water retention measures (NWRMs) and flood protection measures that work with natural processes, the Birds and Habitats Directives (EU 1992, 2010) are looked at in more detail as well. Notwithstanding the links in content and process between the FD, WFD and BHDs, there are also big differences between them. Where the Water Framework Directive and Birds and Habitat Directives are mainly environment related legislation (although with some overlaps to the economic and social issues), an essential element of the Floods Directive is its combination of environmental, economic and social issues (Evers, and Nyberg, 2013): human health, the environment, cultural heritage and economic activities are the four impact categories the EU Member States have to report on.
At the same time this indicates this report limits itself mainly to the environmental aspects related to floods and flood protection measures. Economic, health and cultural impacts will not be dealt with in detail, although they are necessary to come to an integrated (flood) risk management.