ABSTRACT
In his opening address to the symposium, Prof. Erich Plate set the challenge for policy on flood risk management as to prevent flood events from becoming disasters. This means that we must clarify what we mean by a “flood”, and what constitutes a “disaster”; moreover we need to understand, what flood “risk” is before we can address its management. Without laying out these basic concepts we are in danger of talking to each other but not communicating because we do not share a common understanding of what we mean by the words we use.
