ABSTRACT
This chapter assesses the impact of urban growth on future flood exposure. With many cities rapidly expanding within the flood extent of the world's rivers, the need for a comparative study focusing on the effects of riverine flooding on urban and especially metropolitan regions only becomes more pressing. Yet, no cities ranked high for exposure to riverine flooding are ranked low for coastal flooding. The growth of megacities gave rise to an unprecedented concentration of people and assets on limited territories which are in many cases exposed to a multitude of natural hazards including earthquakes, typhoons, forest fires and not in the least: floods. Although many models exist to develop flood impact estimations, the scale of megacities proves to be a challenge concept. Due to the differentiation in local conditions for each city, it is safe to assume the development of the urban flood extent does not progress in a linear fashion among all cities.
