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Floods are particular amongst other forms of disasters since the vast amounts of water that they leave behind can aggravate the immediate damages caused and extend the time of recovery. Apart from the immediate damages to infrastructure and property, crop destruction and disease are also common impacts of flood events (ESA, n.d.). Within cities, extreme events of flooding can have a number of impacts including material, economic and health impacts. Therefore, there is overall consensus that urban areas need to be made more resilient to flooding especially in the face of climate change.

At present, European cities also face specific climate change challenges which are and will continue to sharpen flood risk in urban centres. In a warmer climate, projections show a further increase in the risk of river floods in many western and central eastern European areas and in urban drainage flooding in particular western and northern Europe (EEA, 2016a; 2012b). In this context, appropriate run-off pathways should be ensured when elaborating new development plans and when defining urban drainage systems’ capacity. This should help to enhance the resilience of urban centres against future flood events and reduce their social and economic impacts.

In most urban centres where buildings encroach to the edge of the rivers, flood risk has often been managed by encasing rivers in concrete with many culverts. These constraints result in river maintenance difficulties and reduce the ability of channels to cope with increasingly heavy summer rainfall. Many concrete-lined channels were designed to accommodate major flooding (i.e. every 20 – 30 years). This may no longer be adequate due to predicted climate change impacts. For this reason, flood risk managers are now increasingly committed to creating space for floodwater where possible through river restoration activities (London River Action Plan 2009).