ABSTRACT
Floods are the most significant natural hazard. In the decade of 1988-97, floods accounted for over half of the 390,000 recorded fatalities and a third of the damages from all the natural catastrophes worldwide (Kunreuther and Linnerooth-Bayer, 2003). There has been an increasing trend in flood related damages in the United States in the 1932-97 periods (Pielke and Downton, 2000). Worldwide, the economic losses due to weather related events have had a dramatic increase in losses post 1980, as seen in Figure 9.1 (Berz, 1999; Munich Re, 2001), which is suggestive of a change in the behavior of the system rather than a chance occurrence.
