Institut für Wasserbau

Preface

Dear Reader,

In 2005 the EU COST office approved a new action, the action C22 – Urban Flood Management (COST-UFM). During four years more than 50 scientists from 13 European nations have been cooperating in this action with the objective to demonstrate weaknesses of today‘s knowledge and practice in urban flood management, to provide examples of best practice and enhancement in flood risk management and to provide a framework for future research on a European level.

On behalf of the International Hydrological Program of UNESCO and EU COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) politicians, policy and decision makers, researchers and practitioners have been invited to the closing event of this COST action, the final conference Road Map Towards a Flood Resilient Urban Environment. With the intention to combine the forces of Global and European communities this conference has been organized jointly by UNESCO-IHP and COST-UFM in the Headquarters of UNESCO in Paris on November 26th and 27th, 2009. In a preceding event an INTERREG Day have been organized on November 25th.

It has been the objective of this conference to highlight the recent advances in the progression towards Flood Resilient Cities. 108 papers have been submitted for publication and oral presentation. After a demanding review process of the Scientific Board 83 papers have been selected for oral presentation.

These proceedings contain the program of the conference and the abstracts of all papers selected for oral presentation. The full text of these papers is printed on a CD which is attached at the end of this book. All papers are structured in the following five topics:

Topic A: Policy, decision makers and institutions

covers appropriate policies, regulations, institutions and actors to respond to the pressures and needs to adapt cities to climate change and socio-economic drivers.

Topic B: Impact Assessment - climate change and anthropogenic drivers

addresses a) local scale climate change and the consequences for urban flood vulnerability; b) Integrated Modeling of Climate, Runoff , inundation and Damage; c) coastal processes and flood impacts and damage; and d) probabilistic methods in the risk assessment process.

Topic C: Resilience Technology and non-structural measures – source, pathway and receptor control

focuses on options for: a) flood resilient built environment; b) flood resilient infrastructure; c) SUDS and conveyance systems for exceedance flows; d) management of pluvial, fluvial and coastal flooding; e) emergency responses during an post-flood.

Topic D: Strategy, communication and capacity building

explores possibilities and ways to empower the public and others, gives the state-of-the-art in model-based decision support, covers capacity building of political, professional and public stakeholders and explores possibilities to integrate resilience in Flood Risk Management Plans (as defined by the EU Flood Directive) into urban design and management.

Topic E: Lessons learnt from historic events

integrates all those papers which describe the experiences of past events with the intention to show what went wrong and how to respond more efficient to extreme flood events.

Special thanks is given to the UNESCO-IHP and EU COST who have enabled this conference through providing the conference venue free of charge, bearing the printing costs of these proceedings and giving grants to the invited speakers.

Hamburg, 10th November 2009