Urban flooding poses a serious challenge to development and the lives of people, particularly the residents of the rapidly expanding towns and cities in developing countries. Against the backdrop of demographic growth, urbanization trends and climate changes, the causes of floods are shifting and their impacts are accelerating. This large and evolving challenge means that far more needs to be done by policy makers to better understand and more effectively manage existing and future risks.
Cities and Flooding: A Guide to Integrated Urban Flood Risk Management for the 21st Century provides forward-looking operational guidance on how to manage the risk of floods in a transforming urban environment and changeable climate. The Guide argues for a strategic approach to managing flood risk, in which appropriate measures are identified, assessed, selected and integrated in a process that both involves and informs the full range of stakeholders.
The Guide embodies the state-of-the art on integrated urban flood risk management. It is designed in a comprehensive and user-friendly way to serve as a primer for decision and policy makers, technical specialists, central, regional and local government officials, and concerned stakeholders in the community sector, civil society and non-governmental organizations, and the private sector. It contains chapters which:
- Describe the causes, probabilities and impacts of floods
- Propose a strategic, innovative, integrated approach to managing flood risk accomplished by selecting and combining structural, hard engineered measures and non-structural management measures
- Discuss the means by which these measures can be financed and implemented while engaging with and drawing on the capacities and resources of all involved stakeholders
- Specify the procedures by which progress with implementation can be monitored and evaluated.
Over fifty case studies on management measures and procedures from across the world illustrate the key policy messages. They demonstrate what has been implemented in a wide variety of urban contexts in order to meet the challenges of dealing with flood risk.
A series of “How To” sections covers the operational details of implementing a number of key flood risk management measures, and provides the reader with core technical information. In conclusion, 12 guiding policy principles for integrated flood risk management are presented.